visi 
94 — Rhodora [Max 
the Californian plant there are usually a few long virgate axes; in 
forma compactum the main axes are soon lost among the frequent 
forkings. The tetraspores are as usual borne in transformed ramuli, 
but instead of a few, often only two or three, lanceolate sporophylls, 
we have a dense cluster, the sporophylls often overlapping, occasion- 
ally so numerous that the original formation in one plane is hardly 
distinguishable. The color is a dark, dull purplish red. 
P. coccineum has a wide but peculiar distribution. In Europe it 
ranges from the Faroe Islands to the Canaries and throughout the 
Mediterranean; in America it is known to occur from Vancouver to 
the Mexican boundary, at the Galapagos Islands, and on the coast of 
Chile. I can find no certain record of its occurrence on the American 
shore of the Atlantic. Harvey,' after the record of the California 
locality, adds “Boston Bay, Miss Hawkshurst." Bailey?” gives 
* Mass., Rev. J. L. Russell." Hooper,’ has “Lynn, Massachusetts.” 
I have a specimen marked * Plocamium coccineum Salem and Co- 
hasset, Mass., J. L. Russell" The specimen is a small scrap of 
Ceramium rubrum (Huds.) Ag.; itis a peculiar form, with many short, 
often curved ramuli, set in secund series of three or four, really re- 
sembling some of the more slender forms of P. coccineum. A glance 
with a pocket lens, however, shows at once the articulate structure. 
Harvey continually refers in the Nereis to the Hooper and Bailey 
collections, and when, as in the case of the species now in question, 
and also the “Delesseria Hypoglossum, Boston,” “Rhodymenia Pal- 
metta, Newburyport” and others of Hooper’s list, Harvey makes no 
mention, we may safely conclude that he considered the determination 
wrong, or the record otherwise unreliable. Before the publication 
of the Nereis there was no text book for this country, and Ameri- 
can collectors perforce made use of English manuals. As noted by 
Farlow‘ it is not uncommon to find Euthora cristata labelled Plo- 
camium in the older collections; moreover I have seen in such collec- 
tions specimens of European species marked with American localities, 
when character of paper and handwriting of name agreed with other 
European specimens in the same collection, the record of locality being 
in a different writing from that of the name. There is no occasion to 
1 W. H. Harvey, Ner. Bor.-Am., part 2, p. 153, 1853. 
1 J, T. Bailey, Notes on the algae of the United States, Am. Jour. Sci., Ser. 2, Vol. 
III, p. 84, 1847. 
3 John Hooper, Introduction to Algology, p. 24, Brooklyn, 1850. 
* Marine Algae of N. E., p. 151, 1881. 
