16 



never seen the larger sporangia so transformed, and ven- 

 ture to think that Went was in error in believing that 

 that was the case. Certainly his figures lend no support 

 to that view. Went considers this vegetative development 

 of the sporangia as abnorma.1. AVe think, however, that 

 the phenomenon is a perfectly normal one. It was 

 observed by Went, in 1880, in plants obtained in the 

 Gulf of Naples, and almost every plant which we examined 

 from the Isle of Man, under different conditions, 20 years 

 later showed these adventitious buds. On PI. II., figs. 

 4, 8, 9, and 12, we figure some stages in the development 

 of these vegetative buds, and at fig. 6, one of them isolated 

 (naturally), evidentl}^ in the preliminary stages of forming 

 a new plant. Further observations are, however, desirable 

 on this point, observations which we hope to carry out 

 later in the year. We may add that we never saw any 

 evidence whatsoever of the presence of a gall-producing 

 rotifer ; in all cases the contents of the filaments and the 

 sporangia were perfectly normal. Possibly it may be in 

 the power of some worker at the Biological Station at 

 Port Erin to follow out this subject, and, by determining 

 accurately the fate of the mega-spore and of the hypo- 

 thetical gametes, finally settle the problem, and so add 

 the last chapter to the life-history of one of the most 

 interesting of our British Chlorophyceas. 



