102 CRYPTONEMIACE^. v. 



I. STENOGRAMMA. Harv. 



Frond rose-red, membranaceous, flat, dichotomous and proliferous from the 

 margin, composed of two strata ; the inner of several rows of roundish-polygonal 

 empty cells, the outer of minute coloured cellules. Conceptacles (resembling a 

 midrib) linear, traversing the medial portion of the fertile lobes ; containing, 

 within a thick pericarp composed of radiating cellules, numerous dense clusters 

 of roundish spores, massed together without order ; the clusters afiixed to all sides 

 of the pericarp. Nernathecia superficial, wart-like, scattered, formed of vertical, 

 moniliform filaments, whose articulations are at maturity changed into strings of 

 cruciate tetraspores. 



The rare and singular Alga which at present constitutes this very distinct genus 

 was first found at Cadiz in Old Spain by M. Cabrera, and described by the elder 

 Agardh in 1823, under the name Delesseria interrupta ; the linear conceptacles 

 which are seen on the lobes of fertile specimens having been regarded by the great 

 Swedish Algologist as an interrupted midrib. About ten years subsequently, a 

 solitary specimen, larger and less delicately membranous than the Spanish plant, 

 Avas brought from California by Capt. Beechey, and described by me in the Botany 

 of Beechey's Voyage as Stenogramma Californica. I did not at that time suspect 

 that it had any connexion with the Del. interrupta of Agardh, which I only knew 

 by the short description given in the Sp. Alg. vol. 1, p. 179. Some years passed 

 Avithout more being added to the history of this plant. At length, in 1839, Dr- 

 Montague published a figure in Webb's Otia Hispanica of the Delesseria interrupta^ 

 continuing the Agardhian name. Afterwards, in 1846, the same author found in 

 Bory's Herbarium a specimen, said to have been gathered on the coast of France, 

 agreeing in character Avith my S. Californica ; and then for the first time perceived 

 the relationship Avhich the Del. interrupta, Ag. bore to it. He accordingly removed 

 the latter plant to the genus Stenogramma, calling it S. interrupta. Late in the 

 autumn of the same year, 1846,* Dr. John Cocks discovered S. interrupta in 

 Plymouth Sound, on the south coast of England, and afterwards dredged it several 

 times in 5 — 6 fathoms water, the specimens being attached to small stones. All 

 the specimens hitherto seen either produced the linear co7iceptacles, or Avere barren. 

 The tetrasporic fruit was communicated to me in 1848 by Miss Gilford, who dis- 

 covered it on the Somersetshire coast ; but was first described by Dr. Montagne in 

 1851 (An. Nat. Hist. ser. 2, vol. 7, p. 481.) from specimens collected in the Tagus, 

 near Lisbon, by Dr. Welwitch. In the summer of 1851, I received from New 

 Zealand numerous specimens with both kinds of fruit ; and in the autumn had the 

 pleasure to hail it as a native of Ireland, Mr. Isaac Carroll having dredged specimens 

 with conceptacles and tetraspores in Cork Harbour. I have noAV had the advan- 

 tage of examining and comparing together specimens from all the above localities, 

 and the result is a conviction that all belong to one species ; though the frond is 



* Misprinted 1847 iu Pliyc. Brit. t. 157. 



