Royal Microscopical Society. 145 



forms. For the present, failing the successful endeavour to procure 

 fresh living specimens, for which, thanks to Miss Da vies, steps have 

 been taken, it will perhaps be as well to place the little plant in the 

 genus Botrydium, and from its quite microscopic character name it 

 Botrydium minutiun. 



Another curious point to be noticed is that Botrydium granu- 

 latum is described as decaying rapidly, whilst here we have a minute 

 plant, though discoloured, yet resisting the decaying influences of 

 time ; who can say the exact period ? though 



" Little avail it now to know 

 Of ages passed so long ago." 



whilst the coarser vegetable tissues of the moss have almost entirely 

 succumbed to their action ; the best preserved parts of the moss 

 being the small leaves of the stem, in which in several cases the 

 intimate structure was left very perfect, yet readily breaking up on 

 being handled with the dissecting needles. 



The plant as represented in Fig. 1 may be briefly described as 

 consisting, so far as known, of long coarse, dense, and somewhat 

 roughish non-septate mycelium tubes, from which arise narrower 

 and finer branches, whilst from these, chiefly, spring shorter or 

 longer fine stalks, which bear on their tips globular or variously 

 shaped receptacles or heads, containing apparently a fine plasma, 

 though in some can be seen fine and coarser granules or spores, and 

 a few still rather thinner threads, most likely rootlets. The recep- 

 tacles appear to present two chief forms, one of which, more or less 

 oblong or contorted, and somewhat, as in some of the figures of 

 Vaucheria, may perhaps be regarded in the absence of fresh living 

 specimens as antheroidal in their function, and the other, the round 

 and somewhat granular, as oogonal : though whether the fertiliza- 

 tion takes place by the passage of spermatozoids along the tubes 

 from the former receptacle to the " oogonium," as suggested by 

 Mr. Parfitt, to be the case in Botrydium granulatum, is mere con- 

 jecture. 



By the careful examinations made, were detected some concep- 

 tacles in form oblong and globular {vide Fig. 2 b and a), almost 

 close together, of rather larger size than the ordinary heads ; one of 

 the latter having enclosed several brown, apparently ripe spores ; 

 whilst in a separate oblong receptacle (Fig. 3) may be seen some 

 minute bodies, in the specimen a few highly refringent, which may 

 be antheroidal in function. At the lower end and sides of the plant 

 in Fig. 1 may be noticed some long more or less tubular portions, 

 which differ corsiderably from the rest, and which have some marked 

 resemblance to some of the early stages of fungi, yet are connected, 

 as is seen, with a collapsed cell and a larger irregularly flatfish lobu- 

 lar cell. Whether these differ from or form a primary or secondary 

 phase in the life history of this minute plant must be left doubtful, 



