258 CHARA. 



having been used to scour or clean wooden dishes ; and hence we 

 may infer that the species was once common. It is now a rare plant 

 with us. In the Liberties of Berwick I have gathered it on the moor 

 north of Stony-muir-rig, where it occupied a rough bog several acres 

 in extent ; and Mr. Henderson finds it, abundantly, in a ditch 

 between Greystanelees and the sea. 



II. Charace^. I 



1. Chara vulgaris. Common in shallow ditches, pools in turfy 

 bogs, and in slow muddy runlets. 



2. Cii. HisPiDA. D. In the loch in Holy Island ; and in the Low 

 at Goswick. 



3. Ch. flexilis. B. In Coldingham loch ; in the Eye about a 

 mile below Blackburn ; and in the Tweed at Fishwick Mains. — 

 Grows under water in tufts, or masses, of a dark green colour speckled 

 with the scarlet fruit. Stem from 4 to 9 inches in height, as slender 

 as sewing-thread, filiform, smooth and even, subpellucid, consisting 

 of a single tube filled with a grass-green granulous fluid, irregularly 

 branched : whorls distant, composed of from 5 to 7 branchlets 

 which are mostly simple, but some are forked, and others trifid : 

 they are continuous or unpartitioned, filiform, and pointed at the 

 end, which is covered with a transparent apex : globules (anthers) 

 red with a colourless envelope, sessile in the axils of the forks, and 

 most numerously produced in the axils of the uppermost whorls, the 

 short branchlets of which bend towards, and cross each other, so as 

 to form a cluster. At Fishwick Mains, where the species is most 

 plentiful with us, it grows at a depth of from 6 to 18 inches and 

 more. It had a profuse crop of globules in May, but I could find no 

 nucules nor germs. The first whorl of branchlets springs from the 

 stem just as this emerges from the soil ; and the lower whorls are 

 about \\ inch distant from each other, the interspace being perfectly 

 filiform and unpartitioned. The upper whorls are closer together ; 

 and the clusters they form may be compared to the nest-like umbels 

 of the wild carrot. Mr. Babington says : — " Primary branchlets 

 seldom more than once divided. Sometimes the axillary branchlets 

 are much more divided and clustered, when it has passed for C. nidi- 

 fica with collectors." Ann. and Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 2. v. p. 83. — 

 The tufts form a favourite "cover" for many insects. Limneus 

 putris, in its young age, creeps thick among the branches, and 

 relieves the green of the plant with spots formed by its dark shell. 

 The Valvatae and Cyclas are also fond of its shelter ; and numerous 

 microscopic Algae deform the cleanness of the stems by their excess- 

 ive parasitism. 



