ON THE SEEDS OF CERTAIN ALG. 233 
laciniis subpatentibus, lanceolatis. Ovariùm ovatum, atten- 
uatum, glaberrimum: stigma sessile. 
Fig. 1, Leaf. f2 Male flower. f: 3, the same laid open. 
J. 4, Female flower. f. 5, Seedremoved from the achenium. 
J. 6, Embryo: magnified. 
ON THE SUPPOSED ANIMAL NATURE OF THE 
SEEDS OF CERTAIN ALG. By rue Rev. M. J. 
BERKELEY. 
Aw opinion has been all but established that the seeds of 
certain Alge, when they separate from the parent plant, are 
endowed with real animal life; and that when this ceases they 
begin to vegetate, and are true members of the vegetable - 
kingdom. The observations tending to establish this opinion 
have been made by persons of such authority, as to render it 
next to impossible to deny the reality of the phenomena 
which they describe. The most accurate and interesting 
are those of Franz Unger on the seeds of Vaucheria clavata, 
in Act. Leop. v. xiii. P. 2, p. 191. Indeed the facts seemed 
to have been so firmly established by him, that in the 
“Gleanings of British Algs," I had endeavoured on the 
presumption of their truth, to place the matter in a more 
philosophical point of view, as I conceived, than that in which 
they had been regarded on the continent. But some obser- 
vations of Professor Burnett in his ** Outlines of Botany," 
$ 37, 38, on the motion of small particles in fluid, though 
scarcely bearing at all on the particular motion of the seeds 
in question, (a notion which at $ 232, he seems almost in- 
clined to consider as really animal, if, he says, “no fallacies 
Vitiate the account given of it") at once convinced me that the 
Opinion deduced from the phenomena of the animal nature 
Seconp SERIES, 26 
