546 
ME. E. CUEEEY ON THE FErCTIEICATIOX 
green disks. The fact that each one, without exception, of the circular masses of peri- 
thecia is always crowned by one of these green disks, would seem to point to something 
more than an accidental connexion between them ; and although it is possible that the 
disks might be only a fungoid growth parasitic upon the ostiola of the perithecia. it 
seems far more probable that they really belong to the latter, forming an integral por- 
tion of their structure. If a very thin vertical section be made passing through the 
centre of the mass of ostiola, and consequently through the centre of the disks, it is 
seen that the latter are composed of densely packed fdamentous tissue, hardly diffeiing. 
if at all, from the tissue of which the ostiola are composed. The tissues moreover are 
in actual contact, so close that it is hardly possible to distinguish any line of demarca- 
tion between the two. Such a section is shown in fig. 11, magnified 45 diameters ; and 
it must be taken whilst the plants are quite young, for in a later stage, when the ostiola 
have become black, hardened and brittle, it could not be made. 
The perithecium in fig. 11 was just beginning to fi-uctify, and fig. 12, Plate XXV. shows 
one of the asci with its sporidia, which, although of a greenish tinge and therefore, I 
should think, not perfectly ripe, were nevertheless fully formed, constituting the normal 
fruit of the S]3h8eria. Their average length is of an inch. The filaments of which 
the disks are composed produce two difierent sorts of fruit; the one being minute, 
colourless cylindrical bodies, answering exactly to the spermatia which have been 
observed in the Lichens generally, and in many other Fungi ; the other being of the 
same nature as the bodies which M. Tulasne has called stylospores. I have not been 
able to ascertain the mode of attachment of the spermatia, but the stylospores are 
borne upon the apices of the filaments, and are formed by the swelling out of them 
tips, which afterwards become divided from the mam filament by a septum. These 
stylospores, when viewed in a mass, are of a peculiarly rich, bluish-green coloim, and 
when sutficiently magnified, are seen to be very narrowly elliptical bodies, sometimes 
simple, sometimes with one, two, or even three septa, with an endochrome which is 
sometimes smooth and refractive, and sometimes granular. I found them vary hi 
length from to y^th of an inch. These bodies are shown in figs. 13 « and 
13Z>, and the spermatia in fig. 14. Figs. 12, 13 a, 13 d and 14, are magnified 315 
diameters. 
If the plants are kept in a sufficiently moist atmosphere, these stylospores are some- 
times ejected through the bark in tendrils, after the fashion of a 2IeIanconium ; they 
differ from the spores of the latter genus in being septate, and from Stilhospora by the 
formation of tendrils. If the green disks were autonomous Fungi, these difterences 
would require consideration, as it would in strictness prevent their classification under 
either of the two genera just mentioned ; but there being, as it seems to me, sufficient 
grounds for considering the disks only as forming part of the accompanying Sphteria, 
and not as independent vegetable productions, the differences in question cease to he of 
much practical importance. 
4. Splmria vestita, Fr. — T his Sphseria belongs, like the last, to the division Circinata?, 
