166 FOOTNOTES FROM 



is developed on the outside in the form of dark green 

 homogeneous vesicles attached to the filaments. The 

 spores of some of the species are furnished with ciliae, 

 and are in consequence endowed with active motion, while 

 they are vivified by the agency of spermatozoa. 



The various species of confervse are known in country 

 places by the popular name of crow-silks, and are used 

 when dried for stuffing beds, for making wadding for 

 garments, and some of them even for manufacturing 

 paper. Pliny mentions that, in his time, they were in 

 much repute as a healing remedy for fractured limbs. 

 They sometimes abound to such an extent as to be posi- 

 tively injurious to the health of the people. After floods, 

 for instance, when the water stands several days, they 

 sometimes luxuriate so much, as on their subsidence to 

 form a uniform paper-like mass, to which the name of 

 meteoric paper has been given. Till the stratum be- 

 comes perfectly dry, which is a slow process, except on 

 the outer surface, the smell is often very disagreeable, 

 and the gas generated from it renders the meadows ex- 

 tremely unwholesome. Every one must have remarked 

 the unpleasant odour exhaled by streamlets when their 

 waters begin to fail in a hot summer, and thus expose 

 the masses of confervse which they contain. Specimens 

 of the so-called meteoric paper have been preserved in 

 the library of Bernhedin. One side is smooth, and of a 

 brownish-ash colour, the other of a greenish red-brown. 

 One of the pieces preserved was thirty-four feet long and 

 three feet wide. The grey side was the more compact, 

 and much resembled grey blotting-paper. It received 

 its paler Lue from the bleaching effect of the sun's rays. 



