Since the distribution of Washington material, as mentioned, our species reappears at various points in western Europe, points in England, etc., and will no doubt now share, hereafter as a century ago, the habitat so long conceded to the long familiar older type.
Capillitium abundant, springing usually as dissipating branches from all parts of the columella; the sporangia generally definite and distinct, though sometimes closely placed and generally rising from a common hypothallus.
_A._ Fructification æthalioid; capillitium charged with vesicles 1. _Brefeldia_
1. Capillitium so united as to form a surface net 2. _Stemonitis_
2. Capillitial branch-tips free 3. _Comatricha_
_b._ Stipe and columella whitish; calcareous 4. _Diachaea_
1873. _Brefeldia_ Rost., _Versuch_, p. 8.
Sporangia occupying in the æthalium several layers, those of the median, and especially of the lowest layers, furnished with columellæ which blend beneath; capillitium threads in the lowest layers arising from the columella, in the upper extending radiately between the individual sporangia, and united at the sporangial limits by means of rather large inflated sacs.
The genus _Brefeldia_ is, like some others, difficult to dispose of in any scheme of classification where linear sequence must be followed. Rostafinski placed it in an order by itself. Its relationships are on the one hand with _Amaurochaete_ and _Reticularia_, and on the other with the _Stemonitales_, though easily distinguished from either. It is intermediate to _Amaurochaete_ and _Stemonitis_, and withal, as it appears to us, a little nearer the latter, as the limits of the individual sporangia are in _Brefeldia_ pretty well defined.
PLATE V., Figs. 7, 7 _a_, 7 _b_, and PLATES XXI., XXII.
1825. _Reticularia maxima_ Fries, _Syst. Orb. Veg._, I., p. 147. 1875. _Brefeldia maxima_ (Fr.) Rost., _Versuch._, p. 8.
Æthalium large, four to twenty cm, papillate above, violet-black at first, then purple or purple-brown, developed upon a widespread, silver-shining hypothallus; sporangia in favorable cases distinct, indicated above by the papillæ; columellæ obscure, black; capillitium abundant, the threads uniting by multifid ends to surround as with a net the peculiar vesicles; spore-mass dark violet-black, the individual spores paler by transmitted light, distinctly papillose, 12-15 µ.