Evolution of Plants 331 



Harpochytrium, Prototheca, Polytoma, and Tetrablepharis, that 

 live in fresh-water and on decaying organic material there. 

 These again show decided affinity with some unicellular or 

 mucilaginous multicellular fungi. 



Not a few, however, of the Chfetophoracese and Chroolepi- 

 dacese are epiphytic or endophytic on other algse, on Sphagnum 

 moss, or on a variety of organic bodies, while a few like Ceph- 

 aleuros seem to be largely parasitic. The close resemblance 

 in structure and life history between some of the conjugate 

 algse and the conjugate fungi, or between such siphoneous 

 fresh-water algse as the Oogoniese and corresponding fungi, 

 has often been remarked. 



But, as to the supposed near affinity, that some have claimed, 

 of the red marine seaweeds with some ascomycetous fungi, 

 we believe that several fresh-water lines of derivation can well 

 be traced, any one of which may have originated the now 

 very heterogeneous divisions of fungi that show spermatium 

 and trichogyne union, or formation of ascospores. Thus in 

 several genera of Chsetophoracese elongated hair-processes are 

 produced from zoosporangial or neighbor cells, and so in rather 

 simpler types, intermediate between these and cyanophyceous 

 organisms in which sexual differentiation was just developing, 

 passive spermatia that united with such hairs, in order to 

 reach or pass their contents to a central cell, may have been 

 the starting points for such organisms as the Laboulbeniacese. 



Again the elongated thread-like neck formed by the oogonium 

 of Coleochcete may have remained closed, and have been asso- 

 ciated "wdth spermatia in some rather drier types that became 

 largely land forms. But many now extinct genera allied to 

 Bangiay Lemanea, Sterrocladia, Batrachospermiimy and Chan- 

 transia must also have evolved and existed in fresh water at 

 early periods and in great abundance, if present-day evidences 

 are to form any key to the past. The growth of these at first 

 epiphytically, and later parasitically, especially in their early 

 growth-stages, may have started a wealth of fungoid organisms, 

 before the dawn of the cambrian epoch. 



By slow but sure proenvironal adaptation, niainly of a chemo- 

 tactic kind, to decaying organic material and alternately to a 



