581.151 107 
589.3 
IV 
Polymorphism in the Algae 
HE following is a translation of an extract (pp. 171-186) from 
Professor Klebs’ recent work “Die Bedingungen der Fort- 
pflanzung bei einigen Algen und Pilzen,” Jena, 1896, reviewed in 
Natural Science, vol. x., p. 128 (Feb. 1897). 
The pages in question are written & propos of Prof. Klebs’ 
interesting discovery that the well-known alga, botrydiwm granu- 
latum, is not in reality so polymorphic as the botanical world has 
believed since the publication in 1877 of Rostafinski and Woronin’s 
researches, but that the forms therein described belong, in reality, 
to two very distinct algae, Botrydium granulatum, Wallroth, and 
Protococcus botryoides, Kiitzing, the latter being renamed Protosiphon 
botryoides (Kiitzing) Klebs. 
But my immediate object is not so much to call attention to 
this or any other of the interesting discoveries of which an account 
is given in Prof. Klebs’ important book, as to put into a form easily 
accessible to everyone interested a most Iucid and admirable dis- 
cussion on a question which, to judge from my own experience, 
must continually perplex students of algal literature. No one who 
knows his work can doubt Prof. Klebs’ authority to speak on the 
topic, and it is unfortunate that his luminous remarks, which are 
perfectly complete in themselves, should remain buried in the 
middle of a chapter of his bulky volume, where they can only be 
read’ by a few specialists. Prof. Klebs and his publisher, Dr 
Fischer of Jena, have most kindly accorded me permission to 
publish this translation. A. G. TANSLEY, 
Although a number of the lower green algae were described in 
the first half of this century, it was by Kiitzing and Niigeli that the 
foundation of our present knowledge of these forms was laid. 
Kiitzing described an enormous number of species which he 
distributed partly into new genera, partly into those which Nageli 
had with admirable judgment already established. Side by side 
with the tendency to a thorough-going splitting of species, we find 
in Kiitzing the belief that lower algae transform themselves into 
higher forms, even into moss-protonema. Hitherto these poly- 
morphistic ideas of Ktitzing’s have not succeeded in establishing 
themselves, since they are obviously based on too cursory investiga- 
