86 Mr.C.C. Babington on the British species of Chara. 
original idea was that the plants only formed one species, but 
further study has convinced me that they are far too different to 
allow of their being lumped to that extent, and I am reduced to 
the necessity of considering them all as distinct. They appear 
to be very short-lived, and in all probability will be found to 
produce two crops in the year, one in the spring and the other 
autumnal. 
7. C. Smithii; dicecious, stem slender equal flexible transparent, 
branchlets blunt those forming the primary whorls simple sterile 
long jointed (?), the others on axillary branches numerous 
densely crowded bearing four (three short and one long) 
bracts at their first node, globules stalked subtended by the 
three shorter bracts, nucules unknown. 
C. nidifica, Sm. Eng. Bot. 1703 (principal figure). 
A small plant remarkable, like the following species, for its 
bird’s-nest-like masses of branchlets which spring from the axils 
of the simple branchlets forming the primary whorls. It is only 
known to me from the figure in ‘ Eng. Bot.’ and from some re- 
marks for which I am indebted to Mr. Borrer, and upon which 
the above specific character is founded. 
As the C. nidifica (Mill.) is stated by Professor A. Braun 
(Hook. Kew. Misc. 1. 200) to be “peculiar to the north of 
Europe, and particularly to the Baltic,’ and can therefore 
scarcely be the same as this plant, which was found “in a ditch 
which I believe the tide never reaches” (Borrer in Eng. Bot. Suppl. 
fol. 2762, note) ; and as the plate im ‘ Fl. Danica’ is far too im- 
perfect to allow of its identification with either of our Tolypelle ; 
I have thought it better, with the concurrence of Mr. Borrer, to 
confer a new name upon this plant, which was unfortunately 
made the representative of his C. nidifica by Smith by placing a 
figure of it in the principal place on the plate im ‘ English Bo- 
tany.’ I have the authority of the same botanist for saying that 
the following species was the plant really intended to bear that 
name. The confusion has originated from the idea prevalent at 
the time when the figure was published, that the dicecious plant 
from Lancing was a form of the moncecious one found at Cley. 
Unfortunately these plants are so evanescent that it is only by 
chance that they are again found in their original localities, where 
their seeds probably remam dormant until favourable cireum- 
stances cause them to germinate. 
Lancing, Sussex (1804-5), in a ditch which the tide probably 
never reaches ; not in Shoreham Harbour, as erroneously stated 
in ‘English Botany.’ Mr. Borrer. 
Annual. Autumnal. 
