266 PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 



similar to tbo mode by which higher organisms are derived from 

 lower organisms in the pellicle on an organic infusion. All the steps 

 in the latter process can be watched; it is one of synthesis — a 

 merging of lower individualities into a higher individuality. And 

 although such a process has been previously almost ignored in the 

 world of living mattei*, it is no loss real than when it takes place 

 amongst the simpler elements of not-living matter. In both cases 

 the phenomena are essentially dependent upon the " properties" or 

 " inherent tendencies" of the matter which displays them. 



Wliere should the Characece he placed'? — Mr. Frederick Currey, 

 M.A., F.E.S., in delivering an admirable Presidential address to the 

 West Kent Natural History Society, made the following observations 

 on this important subject. He referred particularly to the researches 

 made by Dr. De Bary upon the genus Chara, which have been imb- 

 lished in the monthly reports of the Berlin Academy for 1871. The 

 mode of reproduction in the Characece has been studied by one of the 

 ablest of German botanists, Dr. Pringsheim, and in his opinion the cell 

 upon which the fertilizing action of tlie spermatozoa operates is not 

 the cell which immediately produces the pro-embryo, but a cell pre- 

 ceding that one by several generations. If this were so, the formation 

 of the fruit in Chara would be similar to what takes place in the mosses. 

 De Bary asserts that Pringsheim's view is incorrect, and that the 

 ovum-cell, or oogonium, is not impregnated until towards the close of 

 its growth, and that the phenomena of impregnation in Chara are not 

 the same as those which characterize the mosses, but are similar to 

 the reproductive phenomena which occur in Vaucheria. The supposed 

 identity in the development of the fruit of the mosses and the Characece 

 caused the latter to be arranged systematically at the commencement 

 of the series of the Mitscrnece, or as a special group in the division of 

 moss-like plants. De Bary, upon the assumption that this supposed 

 identity has been disproved, maintains that the only peculiarity 

 common to the mosses and the Characem and not met with in other 

 groups, is the form of the spermatozoa, and that this is not of syste- 

 matic value. He considers that the Characece ought not to be remitted 

 to the Alga), amongst which they were formerly placed, because that 

 group, in the sense in which it embraced the Characece, cannot be con- 

 sidered as subsisting, it being impossible to arrange the latter in any 

 of the well-defined groups of Algfe. The Characecu ought (De Bary 

 says) to be ranked as a special group, not as a link of transition from the 

 mosses to the Algas, but as an independent group near the mosses on 

 the one side, and the Floridece and Fucacece on the other, allied also 

 to some of the oosporous Confervce, such as Vaucheria. 



The Embrijolocjical Development of Limulus.- — In addition to the work 

 done on this subject by Mr. Packard, we understand that Professor 

 Van Beneden, the eminent Belgian embryologist, on the other hand, 

 has published a paper in the ' Comptcs Eendus de la Socicte Ento- 

 mologique de Beige,' in which, from a study of the embryological 

 development of Limulus, he arrives at the following conclusions : — 

 1. That the Limuli are not Crustaceans, as none of the characteristic 



