THE ANNALS 



AND 



AGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[SECOND SERIES.] 

 No. 59. NOVEMBER 1852. 



XXX. — On a new Genus of the Family 0/ Volvocinese. 

 By Dr. Ferdinand Cohn of Breslau*. 



[With a Plate.] 



The number of imperfectly known organisms in the animal and 

 vegetable kingdoms is already so considerable, that to increase 

 it might, under ordinary circumstances, be regarded rather as 

 burdening than enriching science; this, however, is not the case 

 in respect to forms which not only come to fill up a vacancy in 

 systematic arrangement, but contribute, in the phsenomena of 

 tiieir morphology and development, new material for the solution 

 of more important and general questions. On these grounds I 

 believe that the form which is now, so far as I know for the first 

 time, fully described and figured, deserves the attention as well 

 of botanists as of zoologists, both of whom will claim it as their 

 own especial property. 



I owe my first acquaintance with the elegant organism con- 

 stituting the subject of this essay to my friend Dr. von Frantzius. 

 During a journey through Tyrol in the year 1850, he observed 

 at Salzburg a green mucilaginous colouring of rain-water which 

 had collected in the hollow of a grave- stone in the churchyard of 

 St. Peter ; the colour was caused by the presence of innume- 

 rable colourless vesicles, moving about like Infusoria, containing 

 eight small green globules arranged at regular distances at their 

 periphery. They were accompanied by Chlamydococcus pluvialis, 

 which is common in such hollows in stones. The first discoverer 

 was M, Zambra, an optician of Salzburg, who was, as I am im- 

 .formed by Dr. Frantzius, the delineator of the figures in Werneck's 



* Translated from Siebold and KoUiker's Zeitschrift fur wissenschaft- 

 liche Zoologie, vol. iv. p. 11, 1852, by A. Henfrey, F.R.S., F.L.S. 

 Ann. i^ Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 2. Vol.x. 21 



