STRUCTURE.] DECAISNE AND THURET. 127 



granules ; they are borne on branched articulated hairs, which 

 almost completely fill the conceptacle. Each antheridium is 

 itself inclosed in another perfectly transparent vesicle, a sort 

 of perispore which bursts and thus enables the antheridium 

 to escape into the surrounding fluid. If the male fronds are 

 exposed for some time to the action of air, the antheridia, 

 expelled en masse through the orifice of the conceptacles, are 

 seen to form small orange-red heaps on the thallus. This 

 observation did not escape Reaumur. ' If/ says he, ' you 

 take species of Fucus (serratus and vesiculosus) out of the 

 water in which they grow, when the ends of their leaves are 

 swollen, when the plants begin to get dry, a drop of a thick 

 orange-yellow liquid is seen at the opening of each capsule. 

 This liquor, no doubt, comes from within the capsule, since it 

 is found at the orifice of the latter/ If one of these red 

 drops is placed under the microscope, it will be found to be 

 entirely composed of antheridia, and a number of transparent 

 corpuscles, shaped something like a bottle, and which move 

 about with great activity, will be seen to come out of their 

 extremities. Each of these corpuscles contains a red granule 

 which seems (perhaps from some optical effect) to form a 

 protuberance on its side. In contact with ammonia these 

 corpuscles are dissolved (decompose par diffluence), the red 

 granule alone remaining. Their organs of locomotion are 

 composed of two very delicate cilise of unequal length ; the 

 shortest appears to be inserted towards the narrowest end of 

 the body, the other, much longer than the first, seems to 

 proceed from the red granule ; during progression the shorter 

 is always foremost, and the longer hindmost : this curious 

 arrangement reminds one very forcibly of what has been 

 observed in certain Infusoria of the monad family, in the 

 Cercomonas and the Amphimonas of M. Dujardin. We 

 ought also to notice the analogy between these corpuscles 

 and the so called spermatic animalcules of Chara, Mosses, 

 and Liverworts. These curious beings have been long 

 studied by one of us ; two locomotive ciliae inserted near 

 the end of a filiform spiral body have been found every- 

 where, in the Charas as well as in Mosses, Jungermannias, 

 Marchantias, &c. This structure is, no doubt, very different 



