138 Lake Maxinkuckee, Physical and Biological Survey 



ancestors and stand in the vegetable world much where whales do 

 in the animal kingdom. The mechanism of fertilization among 

 the phanerogams is not at all adapted to aquatic life and generally 

 special devices have to be arranged to bring it about, such as the 

 breaking off and floating of the staminate flower and elongation of 

 the flower-stalk or flower-tube of the pistillate flower as in Vallis- 

 neria and Philotria. Few of the aquatic plants bear conspicuous 

 flowers, the water-lilies being notable exceptions, and none bears 

 fruit in the garden or horticultural sense of the term, that of the 

 water-lilies again being the closest approach to it. The problem 

 of just how the blossom of the horn wort, Ceratophyllum, is fertil- 

 ized we have not solved ; probably the plants float at the surface 

 during the flowering season. Of the phanerogams in the lake, 

 Naias seems to have solved the problem of under-water fertiliza- 

 tion, although we do not know how this is accomplished. It is, 

 therefore, the furthest removed from the land series. Two of its 

 relatives not found in the lake, Zannichellia and Zostera, flower and 

 fruit under water, the latter by the development of a peculiar 

 glutinous, stringy pollen. 



THE ALG;E 



Introduction 



With the exception of the Characeas, which stand rather in a 

 group by themselves, the algie do not as a whole form a very con- 

 spicuous part of the flora of the lake, the waters out from shore 

 being generally pretty free from forms that would attract atten- 

 tion. This is in keeping with the character of the lake, it having 

 few capes or bays, relatively little shore and considerable deep 

 water. A luxuriant algal growth is generally associated with 

 much shore-line or shore conditions, large areas of shallow water 

 and rich, muddy or leafy bottom. The various ponds about the 

 lake in their proper season are richest in algal growths, some of 

 them so much so that after they have dried in summer their place 

 is covered by almost a single immense white sheet of paper — the 

 bleached-out mats of algse which once covered the water surface. 

 Lost Lake taken as a whole is richer in the coarser forms of algse 

 than Lake Maxinkuckee. However, in the larger lake, along shal- 

 low or sheltered stretches of shore with rich bottom, as in the 

 neighborhood of the Inlet and Outlet regions, Aubeenaubee Bay 

 and the artificial channel by the Medbourn ice-houses the fila- 

 mentous forms originally grew in great abundance and very lux- 

 uriantly, furnishing hiding places and a good deal of food for the 



