428 Annals of the South African Museum. 



continent of Africa. Volvox aureus Ehrenb. had been noticed by 

 Schmidle * in material collected in 1899 near the mouth of the Mbasi 

 River, but other records were very scanty. Mr. Rousselet's sample 

 was submitted to the late Professor West f for investigation, and, 

 though no sexual organs were present, the characters of the vegeta- 

 tive colonies were considered by him amply sufficient to warrant the 

 establishment of a new species to which he gave the name Volvox 

 Rousseletii. A few years after this, some plankton material collected 

 by Dr. Jakubski of Lemberg (Lwow) from small, temporary pools 

 in the Ussangu Desert J was found to contain sexual colonies which 

 West stated to belong to this same species, and from an examination 

 of these he was able to complete the diagnosis. 



In 1907 a curious form of Volvox was obtained by Mr. R. T. Leiper 

 from the Albert Nyanza ; this was at first described by Professor 

 West || as " Volvox aureus Ehrenb. (a form)," but he subsequently 

 observed characters scarcely in keeping with those of V. aureus, and 

 decided to regard it as a " new species or new race " of Volvox for 

 which he suggested the name F. africanus.^ It is noteworthy that 

 no trace of this particular Volvox had been seen in the other large 

 lakes of Central Africa, even though they had been more thoroughly 

 investigated than the Albert Nyanza. (It was present, associated 

 with V. Rousseletii, in the material examined by West from the 

 Ussangu Desert.) In 1914, amongst some freshwater algae from 

 Madagascar, Professor F. E. Fritsch ** found a form of V. aureus 

 which he styled forma madagascariensis, and in the same year 

 Brunnthaler -j-j- recorded V. aureus from Egypt. The latter species, 

 under the name of Volvox minor Stein, was also recorded by Madame 

 Gauthier-Lievre JJ from Algeria in 1925. There was no reason why 

 such a commonly occurring genus should not have further representa- 

 tives in Africa, yet, as far as we can ascertain, there are no records of 



* Schmidle, W., " Algen, insbesondere solche des Plankton, aus dem Nyassa- 

 See und seiner Umgebung," Engler's Bot. Jahrb., vol. xxxii, 1902, p. 77. 

 t West, G. S., Journ. Quek. Micr. Club, vol. xi, ser. 2, 1910, pp. 99-104. 

 | In what was formerly German East Africa, and is now Tanganyika. 

 West, G. S., Journ. Quek. Micr. Club, vol. xiii, 1918, pp. 425-428. 

 || West, G. S., Journ. Bot., vol. xlvii, 1909, p. 245. 

 U West, G. S., Journ. Quek. Micr. Club, November 1910, pp. 102-103. 

 ** Fritsch, F. E., Ann. de Biologic lacustre, vol. vii, 1914. 



|t Brunnthaler, J., Beitr. z. Siisswasseralgenflora von Agypten. Hedwigia, vol. liv, 

 p. 219. 



|J Gauthier-Lievre, " Quelques observations sur la More algale de 1'Algerie dans 

 ses rapports avec le pH," 1925, C. R. Ac. Sc., vol. clxxxi, p. 927. 



