(84) 



parts, and scarcely adhering to paper; softer when young and rather 

 adhesive. Coloiu-, a rather bright brownish rose red, duller when dry. 

 Favellse sessile on the smaller branches, formed by the metamorphosis 

 of a ramulus, roundish with a thin pellucid limbus, filled with minute 

 oval spores, and having at the base three to five short setaceous 

 incurwed involucral teeth or ramuli, scarcely longer than the favella. 

 Tetraspores triparted or quadriparted, immersed in the upper ramuli, 

 and generally arranged in linear series within the under edge of the 

 ramulus. 



This interesting little plant appears mostly confined in this country 

 to the south-west of England and south-east of Ireland, and is by no 

 means abundant anywhere. Although we may reasonably conclude that 

 from its small size and somewhat uncertain appearance it may have 

 frequently eluded observation, and many of its habitats, now so few and 

 far between, may still be unknown, yet so far as we yet know of its 

 geograj^hical distribution, it seems to be but limited and scanty. 



Miss Warren, whose specimens we have chiefly seen, informs us that its 

 appearance is somewhat uncertain. This iincertainty in appearance both 

 of terrestrial and mai-ine plants, we believe, has not yet been sufficiently 

 explained. 



We have often remarked the fact, but could never sufficiently explain 

 it, that both marine and land plants would make their appearance 

 abundantly in a locality in one season, and wovdd not be seen there for 

 many years to come. The remark, we believe, is applicable only to such 

 species as are annual in their duration, and the circumstance is perhaps 

 less to be wondered at with respect to plants that inhabit the sea than 

 those that inhabit the land, as the seeds of the latter being generally 

 dropped where they grow, one would natm-ally expect them to spring up 

 most readily when fresh, while the former ai'e liable to be torn up by 

 the tides of the ocean, and carried off root and branch. Probably they 

 may be deposited in places far remote, there to decay, and their spores 

 attaching themselves to the rocks, they may thus vegetate in places where 

 they had not even existed before, whilst the habitat of the parent plant 

 may be entirely lost till restored by some future wave in the same manner 

 as it had been carried off". 



The only species likely to be mistaken for Microcladia glandulosa are 

 some of the smaller forms of Plocamium coccineum, but the secund ramuli 

 of the one, and the incurved apices of the other, will generally serve to 

 distinguish them, and should that fail, the structure under the micro- 

 scope cannot be mistaken. 



The structiu-e of the present genus is not widely diffei'ent from that 

 of Ceramium, but here the coating of cells is without the tube, whilst 



