cylindrical or slightly unequal, not attenuated, emarginate and bimucronu- 

 late at the summit ; each mucro bidentate. The ramenta toward the lower 

 part of the rachis are less regularly formed, and near the base are short, 

 and gradually assimilated at the very base with the squamae that cover the 

 surculus. Substance horny - membranous when dry, soft but firm when 

 recent. Colour when growing a very dark full green. In drying the plant 

 very imperfectly adheres to paper. 



This fine species, when seen in its place of growth, freely 

 waving its dark-green fronds under the clear water of the reefs 

 at Rottnest Island, resembles nothing so much as the branches 

 of the Norfolk Island Pine in miniature, in allusion to which I 

 had called it Caulerpa Araucaria, before I ascertained that Dr. 

 Sonder had bestowed upon it the name of an earlier finder, my 

 valued friend Dr. Ferdinand Mueller, Director of the Mel- 

 bourne Botanic Gardens. No one has contributed more than 

 Dr. Mueller to elucidate all branches of the botany of the colony 

 in which he resides, and no one is more worthy of receiving a 

 tribute of this kind. 



It will be at once perceived, on comparing our figure with 

 that of Caulerpa hypnoides in Turn. Hist. Fuc. t. 173, that there 

 is a very strong resemblance to that well-known species ; so 

 strong, that without a careful examination they may readily be 

 mistaken for one another. I have seen both growing abun- 

 dantly on their native rocks, and can, at a glance, distinguish 

 the present by its much darker colour, more robust growth, 

 more erect ramenta, and the less densely set, and less finely 

 divided scales of the creeping stems. A more definite character 

 may be found in the ramenta, which, in C. hypnoides, are not 

 merely connate at base in pairs, but united for some distance 

 above the base, so as to be as distinctly forked as in C.furcifolia. 

 The magnified figures in Turner's plate are not correct. 



Fig. 1. Caulerpa Muelleri, — the natural size. 2. A pair of twin leaflets 

 or ramenta. 3. Apex of one of them. 4. A transverse section of a leaflet, 

 to show the anastomosing fibres that spring from the inner face of the 

 membranous wall ; the endochrome has been removed. 5. One of the 

 forked squama? from the surculus. 6. Apex of one of its branches : — the 

 latter figures magnified. 



