It is a small but very beautiful form, at first sight to be mistaken for a short S. fusca, though much more intensely black. The capillitium is concolorous, the inner network of rather few open meshes, the outer of large hexagonal openings, the arcuate threads of which are remarkable for the size, and especially the number, of the peridial processes, as many as five or six sometimes appearing along one side of a single mesh. The stipe is very short, and the columella runs as a straight, gradually diminishing axis to the very apex of the sporangium. Total height 3–5 mm.

The English Monograph includes this with S. fusca; but it seems quite distinct in size, habit, color, etc., and has been found in the mountainous regions of Virginia and North Carolina, as well as about Philadelphia.

7. Stemonitis virginiensis Rex.

Sporangia erect, gregarious, from a common hypothallus, generally clustered, cylindric or elongate-ovate, stipitate; stipe black, shining; columella reaching the apex, where it blends with the capillitium; capillitium delicate, the meshes of the net small, scarcely greater than the diameter of the spores; spore-mass umber brown; epispores reticulated, with ten or twelve meshes to the hemisphere, 5–7 µ.

This is a beautiful, and, as it seems to us, a very distinct, species. The markings on the epispore are sufficient to identify it. These are conspicuously banded somewhat as the spores of Trichia favoginea, for example. In habit, size of the sporangia, and capillitial branching, this species recalls Comatricha typhoides (Bull.) Rost. All the sporangia examined are, however, plainly stemonitis in type, possessing the characteristic superficial net.

Until further light this may stand as offered in the first edition. Miss Lister prefers to enter it, banded spores and all, with the comatrichas, on account of color, size and occasional default (?) of surface net.

Virginia, Dr. Rex.

8. Stemonitis webberi Rex.

[Plate XI.], Figs. 6, 7, 8.