402 Dr. J. E. Gray on Elachista stellaris. 
contain a specimen of Conferva curta, and I am not able to 
compare Mrs. Gatty’s specimen with Mr. Dillwyn’s. 
In the ‘ English Botany’ a plant is figured under the name 
of Conferva curta (t. 2034), which was drawn from a specimen 
communicated to Mr. Dawson Turner by Miss Hill, who found 
it growing parasitically on uct in the sea near Plymouth. 
Dr. Harvey figured Hlachista curta in the ‘ Phycologia Bni- 
tannica’ (t. 332), from a poor specimen in the herbarium of 
Sir W. Hooker at Kew, observing that no one has met with 
it of late years. This specimen is most likely the one that 
Miss Hill gave to Dawson Turner, and it appears to be the 
only one now within the reach of the student. Unfor- 
tunately I am precluded by my health from going to Kew to 
examine it. The figures of Dillwyn and Harvey are very 
much alike, while that of the ‘ English Botany’ is so indif- 
ferent that one would be by no means certain that it is intended 
for an Hlachista, if we had not reason to believe the specimen 
from which the figure was taken is the same as that figured by 
Dr. Harvey. Dillwyn’s and Harvey’s figures induce me to 
believe that it is different from the species discovered by Mrs. 
Gatty, as they both represent the ends of the fibres as rounded, 
and not truncated and torn, as they would have been if it repre- 
sented a worn specimen of H. stellaris. Agardh refers #. curta 
of Dillwyn (t. 76), with doubt, and LZ. breviarticulata of Suhr, 
as synonyms to the Hlachista globulosa of the ‘ Species, Ge- 
nera et Ordines Algarum’ (i. p. 11). Areschoug gives the 
name of EH. curta to the Elachista flaccida of Harvey. So 
there is no little confusion about the name of the species of 
this genus; and I fear the L. curta of Dillwyn is still to be 
sought for. 
The British species may be divided into three very natural 
groups. 
I. The filaments crowded together into a hard, compact 
cushion, repeatedly forked below, a long filament arising 
from the end of one and the spore at the tip of another 
branchlet. lachista, Kiitzing. 
E. scutulata, Harvey, Ph. Brit. t. 323. 
II. The filaments divergent from below, forming a radiating 
tuft. The filaments repeatedly furcately branched below, one 
branchlet ending in a long filament, and the others tipped 
with a tuft of filaments having the spores at their base. Phy- 
cophila, Kiitzing. 
E. fucicola, Harvey, Ph. Brit. t. 240. The branched basal 
fibres long, with long joints. 
