348 DEVELOPMENT AND MULTIPLICATION OF FUCACE.E. 



passing-forth, liberate their separate Spores, which, speedily meet 

 with antherozoids, and are fecundated by them. The Spores, 

 when fertilized, soon acquire a new and firmer envelope ; and 

 under favourable circumstances they speedily begin to develope 

 themselves into new plants. The first change seen in them is 

 the projection and narrowing of one end into a kind of footstalk 

 by which the spore attaches itself, its form passing from the 

 globular to the pear-shaped : a partition is speedily observable in 

 its interior, its single cell being subdivided into two ; and by a 

 continuation of a like process of duplication, first a filament and 

 then a frondose expansion is produced, which gradually evolves 

 itself into the likeness of the parent Plant. 



259. The whole of this process may be watched without diffi- 

 culty, by obtaining specimens of F. vesiculosus at the period at 

 which the fructification is shown to be mature by the recent dis- 

 charge of the contents of the conceptacles in little gelatinous 

 masses on their orifices ; for if some of the Spores which have 

 been set free from the olive-green (female) receptacles be placed 

 in a drop of sea-water in a very shallow cell, and a small quantity 

 of the mass of Antherozoids, set free from the orange -yellow (male) 

 receptacles, be mingled with the fluid, they will speedily be 

 observed, with the aid of a magnifying power of 200 or 250 

 diameters, to go through the actions just described ; and the 

 subsequent processes of germination may be watched by means of 

 the Growing-Slide.* The winter months, from December to 

 March, are the most favourable for the observation of these 

 phenomena ; but where Fuci abound, some individuals will usually 

 be found in fructification at almost any period of the year. Even 

 in the Fucacece, according to recent observations, a multiplication 

 by Zoospores, like that of the Ulvaceae (§ 241), still takes place ; 

 these bodies being produced within certain of the cells that form 

 the superficial layer of the frond, and swimming about freely for a 

 time after their emission, until they fix themselves and begin to 

 grow. That they are to be considered as gemmce (or buds), and 

 not as Generative products, appears certain from the fact that they 

 will vegetate without the assistance of any other bodies : whereas 

 the Antherozoids of themselves never come to anything ; while the 

 Octospores undergo no further changes, but decay away (as M. 

 Thuret has experimentally ascertained) if not fecundated by the 

 antherozoids. 



260. Among the Fhodospermece, or Ked Sea-weeds, also, we 

 find various simple but most beautiful forms, which connect this 

 group with the more elevated Protophytes, especially with the 

 family Chcetophoracece ; such delicate feathery or leaf-like fronds 

 belong for the most part to the Family Ceramiacece, some members 



* If the drop be covered, a shallow Cell should be used, so as to keep 

 the pressure of the thin glass from the minute bodies beneath, whose 

 movements it will otherwise impede. 



