68 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
over Befrugtningen hos en Art af Slegten Oedogonium.’ It 
seemed, however, so far as Mr. Archer could judge, to become a 
question whether this plant might not be identical with Prings- 
heim’s Cdogonium apophysatum, described in his ‘ Jahrbiicher fiir 
wissenschaftliche Botanik’ (i, p. 71). Pringsheim does not, 
indeed, describe his particular plant in all its details, as Vaupell 
does, but the characters, so far as given, seem in the main to 
coincide. But opposed to this supposition is the consideration 
that Vaupell, whea ue wrote, must have had Pringsheim’s memoir 
before him. The plant now exhibited had been found for three 
successive years in the same pool, in the “ Featherbed Bog,” and 
last year Mr. Archer had been disposed to regard it as Gidog. apo- 
physatum (Pringsheim), but he had not then seen Vaupell’s 
memoir. With the plant described and figured by the latter 
writer, so far as Mr. Archer had been able to see the characters, 
the present one best accorded; yet it disagreed in other points, 
which if, indeed, but comparatively of secondary importance, were 
yet sufficiently striking. The plant now brought forward has 
ege-shaped oospores ; the oogonium opens about the middle by a 
lateral aperture, which is minute, and bounded by a slight but 
evident projecting rim ; fructification “ gynandrosporous ;” dwarf 
male plants elongate, somewhat curved ; always seating themselves 
near the lower end of the cell, immediately beneath the oogonium, 
and with “foot” and “outer” antheridium; antheridium one or 
several-celled. 
Now, all this accords so closely with Pringsheim’s description 
that one might be justified in taking it as the same plant. Butso 
far as the characters mentioned are concerned, and comparing 
them rather with Vaupell’s figures, this plant seemed best to 
agree with the latter. However, as Pringsheim is silent upon 
some points in connection with his plant upon which, in regard 
to his own plant, Vaupell dilates, the question as to the identity 
of the two is not rendered more certain. And in regard to the 
plant now exhibited, the difficulty is enhanced, as it is precisely the 
very points referred to by Vaupell that could not in the present 
instance be accurately made out. Vaupell describes the mother- 
cells of the androspores as forming nearly square or quadrate 
joints of the filament, and in direct succession, mostly four to 
eight, but sometimes as many as eighteen, which are separated by 
thick-walled septa; thus, as it were, as if an enlarged sporangium 
had become many celled. The lateral walls are described as of 
various thicknesses, indicating that they are developed both from 
“ sheath-cells”’ and ‘‘ cap-cells,”’ the lowest of the series being 
always a “ sheath-cell,” the highest a “cap-cell ;’’ whilst some of 
the intervening cells may be, he thinks, formed without the (cir- 
cumscissile) bursting of the parent cell, characteristic of ordinary 
growth. The androspores find their way out of these cells by a 
minute parietal aperture, not by a dehiscence. Now, the origin 
of the androspores is a point not dwelt upon by Pringsheim, as 
especially regards his @dogoniwm apophysatuin. 
aT 
