284 trustification of the Fucus Nalans. 



A writer in one of the foreign journals, who nientions this 

 work, makes the following obfervations on the fubjeft : — 

 " By the kindnefs of one of my friends I have obtained frorti 

 Spain a fpecimen of the fuppofed flowers of the fucris nafans, 

 and I muft confefsthat the above defcription of the parts doe.-^ 

 not appear to me fatisfa6tory. Mr. Ruiz is certainly right 

 when he fays that the bladders in all the kinds of the fucl 

 contain nothing that can ferve for fruiSlification ; and the 

 experiment he made by carefully ftripping a fuais nata7is of 

 all its bladders, in confequence of which it funk in the water, 

 clearly proves, what the German botanifts have long ago ob- 

 ferved, that the bladders of all the fuel ferve to raife them 

 like balloons, and to keep them floating in the water, as is 

 the cafe with the t/tricularia found in our ditches. The real 

 parts of fruftification in this plant have been clearly pointed 

 out in various kinds of it, by Roth and Stackhoufe. What 

 the author confiders as flowers are fmall polypes, of that kind 

 which Blumenbach calls Brachionus, Their white colour, 

 the threads with which they were conneiSted, and their phof- 

 phoric light, (for he found nothing of the fort in plants de- 

 flitute of thefe appendages,) ought to have led him to the 

 -idea, that thefe bodies do not naturallv belong to the plant, 

 and are merely adventitious. Polypes have already often de- 

 ceived botanifts, who have confidered them as the flowers of 

 -zoophytes without fufpe6ling that they might be the inha- 

 bitants of them. 



'^ The account given by the author of the manner in 

 which this plant grows is carious. The fiicus nutans has 

 no roots, but excrefcences by which it adheres to the bottom 

 of the fea. As foon as it is full grown it becomes covered 

 with bladders, which render it lighter than the water, and it 

 then rifes to the fnrface. In this ftate it floats on the waves 

 from the month of July to September; but after this period 

 it is no longer to be feen between the 34th and the 36th 

 degree of north latitude. It fometimes covers very extenfive 

 parts of the ocean, which^ by thefe means, have the appear- 

 ance of meadows." 



fcOMBINA- 



