A BRITISH CHAROPHYTA. 



observed, combined to render them attractive both to 

 teacher and student. Latterly however it has been 

 realised that so peculiar and isolated a group, without 

 known genealogy or relationship, does not afford a 

 fitting introduction to the study of plant-life in 

 general. 



It was in a Charophyte that cyclosis, that is the 

 rotation of the cell-contents within the cell, was first 

 discovered, and the ease with which this wonderful 

 phenomenon can be watched, even under a low-power 

 objective, in the larger cells of any of these plants, 

 added to their great beauty, has made them favourites 

 with the microscopist. 



The rank which should be accorded 



Rank and tQ tlie ciiarophyta, and the relative 

 position of . /. ' ; , , , 



group position in which the group should be 



placed, have always been debatable, and 

 even at the present time much difference of opinion 

 exists among systematists upon these points. 



The early botanists, relying for the classification of 

 plants upon a superficial resemblance in their vegeta- 

 tive parts, placed the few Charophytes known to them 

 under Equisetum or Hippuris, doubtless on account of 

 their lateral members being produced in whorls. 

 Sebastien Vaillant was the first to separate them as a 

 group, when in 1719 he constituted for them a new 

 " genre ' Char a. Linn sens, both in his natural and 

 artificial systems, treated them as a genus of Algae, 

 but in Reichard's posthumous Edition VII of the 

 * Genera Plantarum ' (1778) they were transferred to 

 a/place among the Flowering Plants, in Class Monoecia, 

 sect. Monandria, in which position we also find them in 

 Withering's 'Botanical Arrangement' (1776), and in 

 the second edition of Hudson's 'Flora Anglica' (1778) 



