98 ROMANCE OF LOW LIFE AMONGST PLANTS. 



have had a place under that genus in Dillenius. 

 The balls are of a deep green mossy colour, are hollow, 

 of an irregularly spherical figure, and of different sizes, 

 from an inch and a half to three inches in diameter. 

 They are covered with very short villi externally, and 

 the thickness from their external to their internal 

 surface is about a quarter of an inch ; their texture is 

 most compact the nearest to the sufface. He denomi- 

 nates them globose conferva.^ 



Subsequently it was discovered that these globose 

 masses of algai were not wholly unknown, since the 

 plant had been described by Linnaeus as Conferva 

 ccgagropila, under which name it came afterwards to 

 be included in British Floras, and was recorded from 

 several localities. The great peculiarity is its growth 

 in compact balls, often as large as a cricket ball. The 

 "very short villi " with which the balls were said to 

 be covered externally were simply the short free ends 

 of the alga, of which the balls are wholly composed. 

 When the plant came to be figured in " English 

 Botany" (pi. 1377) in 1804, it had been found in North 

 Wales and in Shropshire, and all known information, up 

 to date, was collected. "They are the growth," it is 

 stated, " of Alpine lakes in many different countries, 

 and lie in great abundance at the bottom of the water. 

 Their size is from that of a pea to three or four inches 

 in diameter, and their form always pretty exactly 

 spherical. Internally they are hollow, and quite 

 destitute of any nucleus. When separated they are 

 found to consist of innumerable green pellucid jointed 



' W. Dixon, " On Some Vegetable Balls," in Philosophical Transac- 

 tions of the Royal Society (1751), vol. xlvii. p. 280, 



