, as the diachaeas generally, affects fallen sticks and
leaves in orchards and forests and even spreads boldly over the foliage
and stems of living plants.

New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina,
Ohio, Iowa, California, Canada.

2. DIACHAEA SPLENDENS _Peck._

PLATE VII., Figs. 1, 1 _a_, 1 _b_, 1 _c_.

1877. _Diachaea splendens_ Peck, _Rep. N. Y. Mus._, XXX., p. 50.

Sporangia gregarious, metallic blue with brilliant iridescence, globose,
stipitate; stipe white, short, tapering upward; hypothallus white,
venulose, a network supporting the snowy stipes; columella white,
cylindric, passing the centre, obtuse; capillitium lax, of slender,
anastomosing, brown, translucent threads; spores in mass black, by
transmitted light dark-violaceous, very coarsely warted, 7-10 mu.

This is perhaps the most showy species of the list. The globose
brilliantly iridescent sporangia are lifted above the substratum on
snow-white columnar stalks; these are again joined one to another by the
pure white vein-like cords of the reticulate hypothallus. The plasmodium
may spread very widely over all sorts of objects that come in the way,
dry forest leaves and sticks, or the fruit and foliage of living plants.
Closely resembling the preceding, but differing in the globose
sporangia, it may be instantly recognized under the lenses by its
coarsely papillate spores.

Not common. New York, Pennsylvania, Ontario, Ohio, Iowa, Nebraska.

3. DIACHAEA SUBSESSILIS _Pk._

1879. _Diachaea subsessilis_ Pk., _Rep. N. Y. Mus. Nat. History_,
XXXI., p. 41.
1894. _Diachaea subsessilis_ Pk., Lister, _Mycetozoa_, p. 92.

Sporangia gregarious or closely crowded, small, about .5 mm., dull
iridescent-blue, greenish-gray, etc., globose or depressed-globose,
short-stalked or nearly sessile; stipe generally very short, reduced
sometimes to a mere persistent cone, white; columella obsolescent or
reduced to white conical intrusion of the stipe; capillitium radiating
from the stipe, brown, consisting of branching, anastomosing threads,
paler at the tips; hypothallus very scanty or none; spores minutely
warted, the papillae arranged in an irregular, loose net-work,
violet-brown, paler under the lens, 10-12 mu.

This species is easily recognizable by its diminutive size and generally
defective structure; i. e. it has the appearance of a degenerate or
depauperate representative of some finer form. Besides the typ