The receptacles are borne on a panicled fruit-branch, 2-3 inches long, 

 flexuous and alternately branched, issuing from the axil of the pinnpe, in 

 fertile fronds ; each receptacle is 1-2 lines long, simple or forked, and they 

 form short, lateral racemes on the panicle, each subtended by a small, 

 linear bract and a vesicle. The colour of the frond is an olive-brown. The 

 substance is coriaceous and tough. 



A rare and not raucli known species, of which I collected very 

 few specimens, and these only in a yonng state, without vesicles 

 or fruit. Tor the only fruiting specimen I possess I am indebted 

 to the kindness of the late Miss Anne Taylor, of Clonmel, who 

 did not know from what district of Australia it had been sent. 



S. decurrens belongs to a small group of Sargassa distinguished 

 by the union of leaf and stem, by means of the decurrent mem- 

 brane, into a compound frond ox pJii/Uodadium. The species so 

 organized have the habit of Fuciis, combined with the inflores- 

 cence of Sartjassum. Two other species, S. Feronii and S. Bori/i, 

 both from Western Australia, have this character. 



Fig. 1. Sakgassum decurrens, two branches from a yonng frond. 2. A 

 pinna, with its axillary panicle of receptacles and vesicles, from an adult 

 frond : — both of the natural size. 



