154 SIMILARITY OF DRAPARNALDIA TO CONFERVOID FILAMENTS. 
growths. This is important (although not embraced in the subject of this communica- 
tion), because 1 had before noticed their formation only immediately from the contents 
of the filaments. 
In May 1868, a large mass of the radicles of a moss was sent to me, possessing all 
the appearance of a Draparnaldia—so much so that, when I first observed it, I named 
it such, thinking it had simply attached itself to the radicles of moss. However, on 
closer inspection, I found that it actually was a part of the radicle, which was readily 
distinguished also by the red-brown colour of the cell-wall. 
The mode of origin has been attempted to be shown at fig. 5a. Rapidly the cells 
became narrow and elongated, the cell-wall colourless, filled with chlorophyll, though 
towards the extremities the green was paler, till in the terminal cells it was nearly colour- 
less. The end of a branch I have drawn at fig. 6. It shows a tendency to symmetry in 
the branchings. In this specimen the excessive elongation of the terminal cells so as 
to form cilia was not marked; and this was probably owing to another interesting phe- 
nomenon: most of the lateral branches terminated by a short group of branches (fig. 7), 
each having its terminal cell enlarged, and more or less rounded. 
Most of these terminal cells ultimately burst, and. at the same time the water around 
these branches became crowded with small zoospores. These zoospores were of the same 
shade as the contents of the terminal cells. I am not able to say that they were 
seen actually to escape from these ruptured terminal cells ; but the inference seems rea- 
sonable that they come from within them—the more so because the tint of the chlorophyll 
in both was similar, there were only these kinds of zoospores in the water, and they 
were all of the same size. If it be a fact that these filaments did produce zoospores, it 
forms another link with the Draparnaldie, which have been already observed 2 Mr. 
Currey to produce zoospores. 
