SPHJIROPLEACE^E. 133 



" The zoospores are of an elegant shape, but this is not more uniform 

 than their size or colour. Usually they are globular or shortly cylin- 

 drical bodies, from one 190th to one 150th of a line long, of a beautiful 

 cinnabar or carmine red, and furnished at one of their ends with a small 

 colourless bead bearing two long cilia. Some of them are larger, 

 pyriform or fusiform, and the result probably of the undivided con- 

 tents of a resting-spore. Some of the zoospores are two-coloured 

 red towards the beak, and green throughout the other part, or 

 the two colours are variously disposed, the colourless bead or beak, 

 and the two cilia are invariably very distinct. The zoospores exhibit 

 a slow jerking movement during several hours. This movement 

 is often interrupted for several hours, when the whirling suddenly 

 recommences. When the zoospores break through the integument 

 within which they are formed, they are not enveloped in cellulose, but 

 already during their period of activity they begin to invest them- 

 selves with a thin elastic pellicle. At the time of their germination this 

 envelope thickens and lengthens in the form of a spindle, the two ends 

 soon tapering off into long tails, which even the enlarging body of the 

 zoospore itself separates farther and farther apart. The contents of this 

 germ-cell, at first homogeneous and finally granular, change during this 

 first growth. What is left of the red oil is quickly transformed into 

 chlorophyll, and the plantlet assumes a uniform green colour. Never- 

 theless one may perceive from the beginning a number of vacuoles, or 

 limpid, colourless droplets, in the midst of the protoplasm with which 

 they are filled, and between them the chlorophyll collects in rings more 

 or less distinct from each other. Soon large grains of starch appear in 

 these collections of green matter, so that the plantlet combines all the 

 characteristics of an adult cellule of the Sphceroplea, even before it has 

 exceeded a 13th of a line in length. The terminal tails have been 

 observed after the plantlet was more than half a line long. Growth 

 takes place in the middle, by the successive division of the older rings. 

 The contents of the adult threads presents the most beautiful appear- 

 ances. It consists of a colourless protoplasm, a green chlorophyll, a 

 watery liquid, and granules of starch ; the whole so disposed that the 

 liquid element forms large vacuoles in a row, like the pearls of a 

 necklet, and the diameter of which is nearly as great as that of the thread 

 itself. Often these vacuoles abut on each other, and seem to give birth 

 to partitions. In the spaces between the pairs of vacuoles the green 

 plasma and grains of starch crowd together, though the space is dis- 

 jointed by the innumerable small vacuoles they throw off. 



" On approaching fructification the vacnoles multiply to such an 

 extent as to give the endochrome the appearance of a frothy mass, in 

 which the starch granules are ii-regularly scattered. Soon after the 

 starch granules assemble in pairs or threes or larger numbers, and 

 around these groups the green plasma becomes more plentiful, so that 

 in time they appear as so many equidistant cysts in the axis of the 

 thread. The greater part of the vacuoles having gradually disappeared, 

 the green clots assume a stellate appearance, connected by green 

 mucous rays or filaments. Between these star-like clots large vacuoles 

 are formed in pairs, which flatten so as to look like partitions, so that 

 each thread seems to be divided into numerous compartments. 



" The green matter contained in these compartments then undergoes 

 modifications, and the mucous rays are gradually resorbed, the chloro- 

 phyll contracting meanwhile sometimes to the right and sometimes to 

 the left. In a short time the colourless plasm collects around the chloro- 

 phyll in such a manner that the partitions disappear, and the whole 

 contents of the thread breaks up into a large number of free globular 

 masses, easily distinguished from, the ambient colourless mucilage, and 

 containing a certain quantity of irregularly distributed chlorophyll. These 



