MARINE AI^GJB, OF BEAUFORT, N. C. 481 



subdistichously arranged, tapering toward base and apex, long and short ones intermixed, branchlets 

 very slender, somewhat spiny; cystocarps immersed in the frond, inconspicuous; color light, rosy red; 

 brownish when dry. 



Florida; West Indies. 



One specimen August, 1903, one specimen September, 1904, Bogue Beach, Beaufort, N. C. 



Specimens vary greatly in the width of the main axis, the amount of flattening, and the amount of 

 branching, the habit may be loose or very dense. The Beaufort specimens are narrower and less 

 branched than the majority of specimens from Florida, but seem quite surely to belong to this species. 

 They are readily distinguished from other species occurring here by their slightly flattened main axis 

 bearing long and short branches without order in two rows from the lateral margins. 



This is the northern known limit of the species and of the genus. It seems probable that the speci- 

 mens found here were brought from Florida by the Gulf Stream, although they may have grown on the 

 coral reefs offshore. The species is entirely American, the type being from Key West, Fla. 



Genus 4. Eucheuma J. Agardh. 

 Eucheuma, J. Agardh, 1847, p. 16. 



Frond. terete or flattened, radially or distichously branched, more or less beset with 

 short, simple or branched, sharp or blunt papillae; medullary region composed of densely 

 crowded anastomosing filaments, cortex dense, composed of fairly large cells within, 

 becoming smaller toward the surface; tetrasporangia scattered among the superficial 

 cells of the cortex, zonately divided; cystocarps immersed in the cortex, prominent, 

 usually in papillae, sometimes on the thallus itself, having a large, almost spherical 

 central cell from whose surface arise numerous crowded radiating tufts of richly branched 

 spore-bearing filaments separated by strands of sterile filaments running from the 

 central cell to the dense inclosing pericarp, communicating with the exterior by a pore; 

 carpospores borne singly in the terminal segments of the fertile filaments. 



About 15 species, in warm seas, especially in the Indian Ocean. 



Eucheuma gelidium J. Agardh. PI. XCVIII, fig. 2. 



Eucheuma gelidium, J. Agardh, 1852, p. 627. 

 Eucheuma gelidium, De Toni, 1897, p. 372. 

 P. B.-A. Nos. 541, 2184. 



Frond ancipitate compressed, pinnately decompound from the margins, 5 to 13 cm. tall, 3 to 5 mm. 

 wide, bearing numerous short, simple or branched, spinelike papillae, possessed below of few elongated 

 pinnae, with smaller tooth-shaped ones interspersed, branched above into a dense corymb; pinnae 

 distichous, flattened, emitting below abbreviated, little-divided { spine-shaped pinnules, in the upper 

 part longer ones divaricately much branched; substance fleshy-cartilaginous, rather rigid; color dirty 

 reddish. 



Florida; West Indies; Barbados. 



One battered specimen, Bogue Beacih, Beaufort, N. C., August, 1904; several specimens, Fort 

 Macon jetty, Beaufort, N. C., July, 1907; rather abundant on jetties, Ocracoke, N. C., August, 1907. 



This species can be distinguished from Agardhiella tenera, which it most nearly resembles, by its 

 coarser, firmer texture, its denser branching with development of numerous irregular spinelike 

 branches. In section E. gelidium has a denser structure, the central (medullary) layr of anastomosing 

 filaments is more developed, and the cortical layer is thicker and is more distinctly composed of short 

 filaments rather than single cells. The specimens from Ocracoke are often in whole or in part rather 

 fine and slender, but are comparatively rigid. In all the specimens from this region the development 

 of spinelike branches is less marked than is usual, although they agree with this species in other respects. 



This is the northern limit of the genus on our coast. 



