HARDWICKE'G SC I E N C E-G ') S S I 



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The other is C. rulrum, var. decurrens ; the iuter- 

 nodes of the stem and branches being traversed by 

 a decurrent line, or faintly-mark(^d stripe. 



Microcladia glandulosa proper was found by Dr. 

 Cocks in 1S51, in rather considerable quantity, and 

 by myself soon after in similar abundance ; but my 

 friend rarely met with it afterwards, and I never 

 took it again, neither at Plymouth nor elsewhere. 



But still more remarkable was the appearance of 

 a single plant of Codlum bursa ; discovered by Dr. 

 Cocks on one of the mooring buoys in Plymouth 

 Harbour. But it was the first and the last, for not 

 a single specimen of this rare plant was ever again 

 taken by either of us, and up to the present time 

 I have never heard of another being discovered in 

 that locality. Now the appearance, or rather I 

 should say, the non-appearance of this singular 

 plant, except in some few localities, is really very 

 extraordinary. Professor Harvey gives the follow- 

 ing list of stations as its only recorded places of 

 growth : — " Coast of Sussex ; Shores of Cornwall . 

 South Devon (near Torquay), and Belfast." The 

 only habitat known to me is one outlying rock, at 

 extreme low-water mark, between Brighton and 

 the village of Rottingdene, and although I sought 

 diligently for several seasons successively, all along 

 the coast, east and west of Brighton, and indeed, on 

 every shore, and in every locality where seaweeds 

 grew, I never met with a single specimen of this 

 rare and curious chlorosperin. It may be that its 

 very peculiar form, which is that of a round green 

 shiny-looking ball, misleads the uninitiated, and 

 that it is thus occasionally overlooked ; but I, for 

 one, know it well, and I am sure I have never 

 missed it, and have often wondered at its extreme 

 rarity. There is another plant belonging to the 

 same order as this rare Codiitm bursa, which is, in 

 my opinion, one of the most beautiful of our native 

 green seaweeds, and although by no means a rare 

 species, is, so far as my experience concerning it 

 goes, singularly capricious as to its growth and 

 appearance in the same situation for even two years 

 consecutively. I allude to Bnjopsis plimosa: I 

 have taken this plant in very many different 

 localities and in tolerable abundance, but in no 

 instance in the same locality two seasons consecu- 

 tively. Many years ago, I took several very fine 

 specimens in two or three rock pools at Hastings 

 and St. Leonard's ; but although I visited those 

 ■watering-places for several seasons afterwards, I 

 found no more of this elegant and much-prized 

 alga. Since my sojourn in Torquay I have sought 

 in vain for characteristic specimens of it, but I have 

 only met with stragglers here and there, a stray 

 plume or so, but no one instance of a well-grown 

 tufted plant of Bryopsis plumosa. On the other 

 hand, I have been fortunate in meeting with the far 

 more rare species, B. hypnoides. The first time I 

 ,found it was late in the summer of 1S71, in a little 



rock pool far up iu those cavci'nous recesses round 

 the corner of Corbon's Head, so high up, indeed, 

 that only at the highest state of the tide could this 

 rocky shelf to which I refer, have a chance of a 

 water supply, much le^s an influx of spores of sea- 

 weeds. Tills species is so extremely delicate in 

 its ramification, and so faintly apparent in the 

 growing state to ordinary observers, that although 

 I removed a portion of the plant, I left more than 

 two-thirds of it still attached to a plant of one of 

 the calcareous algse on which I found it growing. 

 This season I found it had disappeared ; but in a 

 deep rock pool, about twenty yards lower down, 

 and fortunately not very accessible to ordinary 

 pedestrians, I detected, at a depth of more than two 

 feet, numbers of fine tufts of this rare species grow- 

 ing luxuriantly. This, of course, was a secret 

 delight to me ; for although I took sufficient to make 

 a dozen specimens for various algological friends, I 

 left an ample supply to propagate and diffuse the 

 species around this favoured locality. I found this 

 rare plant occasionally at Plymouth, but on no 

 other part of the English sliores. The genus Bunc- 

 taria contains three beautiful species, two of which, 

 P. latifolia and P. plantaghiea, are generally met 

 with in spring and summer. But the species 

 tenuissima I have never taken since I found it on 

 one of the groynes near the pier at Brighton. Mrs. 

 Griffiths and others found it formerly growing on 

 Chorda filitm off the Hesketh beach, where this 

 long string-like alga may be seen during the summer 

 months imparting an olive tint to the water near the 

 gentlemen's bathing-place, on account of its pro- 

 fusion there ; but although I have searched the 

 rock pools all round this coast, and swam about 

 even among the plantations of this long slimy sea- 

 weed, — a dangerous experiment by the way,— I 

 have never met with a single specimen of this rare 

 Pundaria. Some algologists specially mention the 

 Zostera marina, or grass-wrack, as its peculiar 

 place of parasitic growth ; but of the vast quantity 

 of this prolific plant that has, during the last two 

 or three months, been cast ashore here in Torquay, 

 and even flung, by the force of the tide, all along the 

 top of the sea-wall in Torbay, not a fragment of it 

 yielded one frond of the Pundaria tenuissima. 



I have already spoken of the rarity, among the 

 green weeds, of Codium bm-sa, and I now may 

 mention as a precisely similar instance among the 

 red subdivision of algae, the very rare occurrence 

 of the species Griffithsia secundiflora, which is often 

 tolerably abundant in the Channel Islands, but has 

 not been found, so far as I know, in any other 

 situation on the British shores, besides the sheltered 

 bay at Bovisand, east of the Plymouth Breakwater, 

 where it was first discovered /)y the Rev. Mr. Hore, 

 in ]8iG. I have sought for this plant elsewhere in 

 vain, and have applied to every collector for it 

 with no better success; but as I never failed to find 



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