THE ZOOLOGIST. 
THIRD SERIES. 
Vou. IIL.] O@ PO BH Ric 1879: [No. 34. 
PROF. DODEL-PORT ON THE FERTILISATION OF 
RED SEA-WEEDS BY ANIMALCULA. 
In a recent number of the excellent periodical ‘ Kosmos,’ 
Dr. Dodel-Port, the eminent botanist, of Zurich, has published 
the results of a series of observations made by him regarding the 
part played by Animalcule in the fertilisation of a certain species 
of Floridee, or red sea-weed, viz., Polysiphonia subulata, J. Agas. 
The paper is of great biological importance, since it forms, so far 
as our knowledge extends, the first record of the participation of 
animals in the fertilisation of cryptogams, which in itself is an 
interesting parallel to the relations existing between insects and 
phanerogams. We have pleasure therefore in presenting our 
readers with an illustrated abstract of the paper in question.* 
In previous numbers of the periodical referred to, Dr. Hermann 
Miiller has sketched the history of evolution of the floral world, 
and has shown the’basis upon which the entire relation between 
flowers and insects rests. This basis is the transition of the male 
sexual cells from the liquid medium of water into the dry atmo- 
sphere which occurred at the upper boundary of the cryptogamic 
flora of prehistoric times. 
In almost all cryptogams which are not agamic, the contents 
of the male cells are actively movable; when they leave the 
cell they move freely about in the water by means of vividly 
oscillating cilia. They thus possess the faculty of moving inde- 
* For the translation from the German we are indebted to Mr. Carl Armbruster, 
and for the use of the woodcuts to the publishers of ‘ Nature.’ 
34 
