132 ARCHER, ON PALMOGL@A MACROCOCCA. 
body, of a reddish colour; figs. 26 to 31, various empty cell- 
membranes, showing the valve or lid-like portion detached. 
Affinities and differ ences.—This is the only species I am 
acquainted with which reaches the size of M. Braunii, but it 
differs from that in the pale colour of the mass, in the 
broadly elliptic, not cylindrical cells, in the much narrower 
chlorophyll-plate in edge view, in this not being proportion- 
ately so much expanded at the ends or at the middle, in its 
not reaching the extremities of the cells, and in its being 
more frequently eccentric and somewhat curved. It more 
resembles M. violascens in figure ; but it is of larger size and 
different colour, the chlorophyll-plate in edge view is nar- 
rower and more pointed, the cells are not so broadly rounded 
at the ends, the endochrome is less dense, but more scattered, 
and the parietal layer not so well marked. It is distinguished 
from M, chlamydosporum by its elliptic, not cylindrical, out- 
line, by its greater width in proportion to its length, by its 
not shedding its coat during division. Its elliptic, not eylin- 
drieal, figure, and densely gelatinous habit, separate it from 
M. Endlicherianum (Nag.). I do not set any distinctive 
value on the remarkable phenomenon of the extrusion of the 
eell-contents through a valvular opening, as I conceive, 
whatever it portend, there may be nothing to prevent a simi- 
lar occurence im any other species. 
While I have to apologise for the discursive tendency m7 
rather irregular arrangement of this paper, I am, at the same 
time, indeed, well aware that there is far more in it that is 
not new than that is so, and that the former has already been 
much better laid down by De Bary than I could ever hope or 
pretend to do; but the former was necessary to illustrate 
and elucidate the latter, and I know of no English work in 
which, as I imagine, these plants are properly described, 
Therefore I consider that the little that is new in these re- 
marks will not be without its value as a contribution, small 
though it be, towards an eventually more correct acquaint- 
ance with these humble and obscure organisms, occupying 
so lowly a corner in the great domain of the vegetable 
kingdom. 
