fallen trunk. In a few weeks' time, affected by alternate rain
and sun, the whole surface becomes marked with hundreds of minute,
almost invisible cracks, and it is in the larger of these that the
plasmodium of the present species has its habitat. Hardly any mycologic
phenomenon is more surprising than to see plasmodia rising to
fructification, scores at a time, upon a surface, new and white, showing
otherwise no evidence of any decomposition. Doubtless the persisting
cambium, the unused starches, sugars, the wood of the season yet
unlignified, afford easily accessible nutrition.

When this form was first examined in the laboratory its distinctness was
immediately seen. It was without doubt Fries' cribrose reticularia;
nobody questions that. Under this name, citing Fries' description,
specimens were sent out to herbaria as Harvard. Further study of the
records, however, soon convinces one familiar with the ontogeny of the
case that we are here face to face with the species, described by Alb. &
Schw. in their fine _Conspectus_. Their account of the form, evidently
often taken and now described with great care, is entirely clear when
read in presence of the facts. It is here submitted, as less easy of
access but essential, if the reader would appreciate the present
disposal of the species.

"S. Tubulina NOBIS

"_S. magna pulvinata subhemisphaerica, stylidiis gregariis
circinantibus, capillitiis elongatis cylindraceis in massam pulveraceam
fuscam connatis, apicibus obtusis, prominulis, lucidis nigris._

"The size indeed, the circumscribed form, the capillitiums conjoined
into a single body--indue this (form) with an appearance peculiar to a
degree; however, should anyone prefer to call it a very remarkable
variety of the preceding (_S. fasciculata_), we shall not strenuously
refuse. At first glance it looks like a tubulina. After the fashion of
its kind, the beginning is soft and milky. The diameter generally an
inch and a half to two inches, the height four to six lines; the form
perfectly round, or more rarely somewhat oblong. The hypothallus, stout,
pellucid silvery, betimes iridescent, when turned to the light, easily
separable from the substratum, bears the columellae, dusky, thin,
hair-like, aggregate and yet entirely free, and everywhere circinately
convergent, depressed by the superimposed burden, hence decumbent: ...
the capillitium loosely interwoven, coalesces to a common mass whose
smooth and shining surf