180 FRESHWATER WEEDS. 



the microscope, where every bead appeared as a lovely 

 round cluster of delicate branches. There is a black 

 species and a green species, both delicately beautiful, 

 and resembling this one in structure. 



Flood-left pools by the side of the Wye furnished me 

 with specimens of the Zygnema Quininum. Its fronds 

 are thread-shaped, and entangled, and the masses were 

 so slippery to the touch, that I thought they should have 

 belonged to the family named after the frog-spawn. 

 The Dotted species has the same slippery texture, indeed 

 it is the characteristic of the family. The Bent Zygnema 

 (Z. genuflexuni) is finely branched, mud coloured, and only 

 about an inch high ; it is scarcely possible to clear it 

 from the mud among which it grows. A very refined 

 lady was one day greatly amazed to see some of these 

 mud-dwellers washed and floated out. She loved all 

 created things, but a numerous family of young children 

 left her no time to study minute herbs. Speaking of a 

 well-known naturalist, she said, " when she takes up a 

 bit of mud, shakes it in the water, and puts a bit of 

 paper under it, a beautiful Alga appears ; but if I pick 

 up a bit of mud, and do the same, there is only a bit of 

 mud on the paper." 



Upon stones, in streams in Swaledale, I have found 

 dark green bodies like small peas ; these were plants of 

 the Freshwater Eivularia, a genus belonging to the 

 Oscillatoriacea? group. The Echinellse succeed the 

 Eivularia?, they are minute weeds growing in freshwater, 

 and parasitic in Conferva?, and other water plants. The 

 Circular species grows round the stem, radiating like the 



