THE ALGAE OF VICTORIA. 493 
the trama is almost absent, and the tubes very numerous, and 
another small form with copious, more delicate, trama, and a 
single more or less convoluted sack. This latter form is often 
found lying on the surface, with the peridium alone left, the trama 
and hymenium being both consumed by insects, The asci and 
spores are the same in all three forms. 
Genebea tasmanica is a medium-sized rather fleshy tuber, with a 
white fleshy gleba, in which hyaline patches occur. In these 
patches are developed pyriform asci, each containing four oblong 
shining black spores. 
Endogone australis I am unacquainted with, and it appears still 
to be in that most unsatisfactory position of possessing a name 
without a definition. 
No. 7.—THE ALGAE OF VICTORIA. 
By Henry Tuos. Tispauu, F.LS, 
(Read Tuesday, January 11, 1898.) 
THe south coast of Victoria is washed for nearly its whole 
extent by the waters of Bass’ Straits, and it may be presumed that 
it is mainly owing to this, that under certain circumstances such 
enormous quantities of sea-drift are thrown on our shores. One 
instance will be sufficient to illustrate this. In January, 1897, 
the weather was very unsettled, and on the morning after a 
strong gale from the south-west, the writer of this paper found 
the whole shore, from Barwon Estuary away towards Port Lons- 
dale, covered with a mass of sea-drift varing from 1 to 3 feet 
high. 
The main current in Bass Straits comes from the Pacific Ocean, 
but every island, rock, or headland turns some of its waters in a 
different, often an opposite, direction. Asa matter of fact there 
was a strong westerly current on that day along the coast of 
Ocean Grove from Barwon Heads towards Point Lonsdale. The 
mass of seaweeds was composed of hundreds of different species, 
brown, green, and red, all mixed and churned into inextricable 
confusion. It is a pity that the wealth thus thrown up by the 
sea should not be utilised. In other countries hundreds of men, 
women, and children would have rescued thousands of tons of this 
valuable manure, thus enriching the soil in the neighbourhood. 
But no one interfered, and after a couple of tides the whole was 
gradually sucked back by the retiring waters, and the beach for 
miles presented an unbroken surface of sand, save a slight margin 
