46 Prof, de Notaris on Ginnania furcellata. 



being afterwards compressed and ending together in the circum- 

 ference of the frond assist in strengthening the superficies. 



The threads, bent in a horizontal direction, agree closely with 

 the loosely fibrous intermediate stratum of the frond, of which 

 Kiitzing speaks in his description. 



In short, the enlightened Zanardini, when speaking of his 

 Halymenia furcellata cartilaginea, has compared its elements to a 

 group of individuals like Callithamnion (Massa inde dimanans 

 hand inconsulto haberetur pluribus generis Callithamnii individuis 

 constituta, quce ita conservantur atque contexuntur ut quasi ma- 

 joris implications formam affectare vellent. Zanard. /. c. p. 124), 

 the principal threads of which gathered together constitute the 

 central part ; the extremities of their ultimate branches diverging 

 in a horizontal direction, the peripheric stratum. This notion, 

 setting aside the many differences which separate generically the 

 variety from the species, may not without truth be transferred 

 on comparison from the one to the other. 



I have also said that the frond of Ginnania is something like 

 the thallus of some lichens, because in many of the fruticulose as 

 well as the foliaceous species of this family, I have seen the fila- 

 ments of the hypothallus often send out communicating branches 

 into the gonimic stratum, from whose apices spring the vegetating 

 cells or gonidia, bearing precisely the same relation as the super- 

 ficial cells to the filaments which diverge horizontally in the frond 

 as already described. 



The fruit, as I have already remarked, arises more or less 

 copiously, without any order, from the internal superficies of the 

 peripheric cellular stratum : its form is spheroidal, without pe- 

 dicels ; it is of a pale rose-colour, visible to the naked eye by 

 translucence through the outer surface. The walls of the frond 

 become thinner where they are in contact with the fruit, but have 

 no perforations of any kind. When slightly pressed between the 

 object-glasses, the fruit opens at the top and emits one, two or 

 more nuclei of a globular form, whose surface is hispid or echi- 

 nulate. When divided with the point of a lancet they present a 

 complete wood of short and delicate filaments, undivided, bifid or 

 dichotomous, as if united into fascicles radiating from a common 

 centre. These filaments are cylindrical, slightly clavate, and in- 

 close one, two, or at most three nuclei of liquid endochrome, which 

 is slightly olivaceous and separated by diaphanous intervals, in 

 which I have not been able to trace any indication of dissepi- 

 ments. 



I dare not assert whether the spores are formed by the succes- 

 sive evolution of the undivided filaments or by the disarticulation 

 and contemporaneous compression of the coloured nucleus con- 



