TRANSACTIONS 



OF 



THE LINNEAN SOCIETY. 



I. Monograph of the Acetabularieoi . By Hermann, Graf zu Solms-Laubach, 

 Professor of Botany, University of Strassburg, Foreign Member of the Linnea^i 

 Society. 



(Plates I.-IV.) 

 Read 19th April, 1894. 



1 HANKS to the work of Nageli, Woronin, de Bary, and Strasburger, the structure 

 and development of the European species of Acetabiilaria are tolerably well known, 

 and about no other type of Dasycladeae does there exist so rich a literature. Woronin 

 and de Toni have sufficiently treated of the older literature occupying a standpoint which 

 we may now consider left behind us. Leitgeb has minutely investigated the rich 

 inuline contents of the plant; the same author has made the cell-membrane and its 

 incrustation the subject of a critical treatise ; and the other forms of Dasycladeae have 

 recently been repeatedly studied by Agardh, Cramer, and myself. However, a com- 

 parative examination of the genus Acetahularia and its nearest allies from the 

 systematic point of view has always remained a desideratum, though serviceable 

 preliminary treatment of it has been furnished by Kiitzing, Harvey, Agardh, and 

 Cramer. Since the systematic study of Acetahularia provides a foundation for 

 palaeophytological work I have been the more attracted to it, and will submit the results 

 of my examination into this side of the subject in the following pages. If I have 

 attained anything having a claim to general interest I must attribute it first of all to the 

 great liberality and kindness with which valuable material has been made accessible to me. 

 I have been able to examine the AcetabulaiHece of the British Museum, of the Kew 

 Herbarium, of the Herbarium of Thuret, of the Berlin, Gottingen and Strassburg 



SECOND SERIES. — BOTANY, VOL. V. B 



