82 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



Some species are fixed, others are free-swimming. In lakes, 

 lagoons, reservoirs, ponds, marshes, gutters, rivers, water-spouts, 

 and old wheel ruts we may find them, as also on damp earth, 

 tree trunks, moist walls, &c. The " Water Fleas," Simocephalus, 

 Daphnia, &c., and other Entomostraca may often be seen carry- 

 ing, in addition to busily-feeding Vorticellse, small, bright-green, 

 club-shaped bodies, which are unicellular Algag. 



A glass of rain-water, left covered with glass, but exposed to 

 the sun's rays, rapidly developes a green coating of Algae on the 

 sides. Some species grow in hot springs, and others on snow- 

 fields ; while very strange habitats are recorded for some species, 

 one having been found frequenting the hollow hairs of the Three- 

 toed Sloth ; while many filamentous forms have others of less 

 growth attached to them, though not as parasites. 



Before the commencement of the i8th century little was known 

 of these plants, but during the i8th, and more particularly the 19th 

 century, there appear in the records the names of workers too 

 numerous to mention. Tn comparatively recent years the work 

 of Hassall, Ralfs, and Cooke in England, and Wolle and Wood 

 in America, devoted to the fresh-water Algce of their respective 

 countries, has done much to render the task of the British 

 student less difficult. Evidence, also, of the important work being 

 done by W. and G. S. West in England and elsewhere reaches us 

 periodically in science journals. In New Zealand some work has 

 been done, but I have not yet been able to obtain the details 

 of recent investigations. Coming now to Australia, I find that 

 Queensland leads, three of Mr. F. M. Bailey's bulletins descrip- 

 tive of the "Queensland flora" having been devoted to the 

 fresh-water Algae. There, too, the difficulty of identification, in 

 the absence of the necessary literature, seems to have been 

 encountered, as the species have been sent to Europe, and 

 determined by Professor Moebius, who has also named new 

 species and new varieties of known species. In New South 

 Wales Mr. J. H. Maiden has some preserved specimens, but 

 there do not seem to be any other records of local work having 

 been done. In Tasmania, South Australia, and Western Australia 

 the work is almost untouched as regards local inquiry, though a 

 number of species from South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria 

 are mentioned in the late Baron von Mueller's " Fragmenta 

 Phytographiae Australasise." In Victoria nothing has been done 

 recently. In 1864 the late Mr. Henry Watts submitted a list of 

 Confervacese and Desmidiese to the Royal Society of Victoria. 

 This list comprised Algae collected at Warrnambool, Ballarat, 

 Bacchus Marsh, and in the Yarra valley. About twenty years 

 later he read a paper before this Club entitled " Some Recent 

 Additions to Our Knowledge of Microscopic Natural History " 

 (Vict. Naturalist, vol. iii. (1887), p. 133). In the latter portion of 



