Mr. Ray, both in his History of Plants, and in the Supplement, as he was usually averse to the forming of new names, has interspersed them among other mosses, under the character of _musci steriles seu aspermi_, retaining the synonyms of the two Bauhines, Gerard, and Parkinson, to the general species. Dr. Morison seems to have been the first, who separated them intirely from the herbaceous mosses; and, from the analogy he supposed they had with the fungus tribe, formed them into a genus, under the name of _musco-fungus_. He enumerates fifty species and upwards under this term in the _Historia Oxoniensis_, and has divided them into five orders, according to their different appearances, as follows: 1. _Musco-fungi e terra prominentes, latiores._ 5. 2. _Musco-fungi pixidati._ 11. 3. _Musco-fungi corniculati._ 26. 4. _Musco-fungi crustæ modo adnascentes._ 37. 5. _Musco-fungi corticibus arborum dependentes._ 53. Table the 7th of his 15th section exhibits several good figures of some of these lichens. Tournefort was the first, who adapted the generical term _lichen_ to them; but it was in consequence of his joining them to the lichen of the shops. He has however excluded the coralline-mosses, and forms them into a genus, by the name of _coralloides_; to which he has connected some plants, properly of the fungus tribe. In this distinction he is followed by Dr. Boerhaave in his _Index alter Plantarum_. Dr. Dillenius first called them _lichenoides_, in the catalogue of plants growing about Giessen, chusing to retain the word _lichen_ to the liverwort of the shops. Under this name however, in this work, he does not comprehend the _usneæ_, or hairy tree-mosses, but refers them to the _conservæ_, adding the epithet _arborea_ to each species, to distinguish them from the water kinds. He enumerates upwards of sixty species of _lichenoides_, but has applied few or no synonyms to them. Under the same generic term he has introduced them into the third edition of Ray’s Synopsis of British Plants, taking in the _usneæ_, and recounting upwards of ninety species, all found spontaneously growing in England. Many of these are undoubtedly only varieties. They are in this work very naturally divided into several orders and subdivisions, for the greater ease of distinguishing them, as follows: _Lichenoides_ _caulifera_ 1. _Capillacea et non tubulosa scutellata._ 2. _Coralliformia tuberculosa plerumque._ a. _Solida et non tubulosa._ b. _Tubulosa._ 3. _Pyxidata._ 4. _Fungiformia._ _cauliculis destituta_ 1. _Mere crustacea._ 2. _Crusta foliosa scutellata seu foliis scutellatis arcte adnascentibus_ - a. _Substantiæ gelatinosæ._ b. _Substantiæ durioris._ 3. _Foliis magis liberis nec tam arcte adnascentibus_ a. _Scutellatis et tuberculatis._ b. _Peltatis._