1900] STRUCTURE AND REPRODUCTION OF COMPSOPOGON 261 
determined by published figures and descriptions few of them 
appear to be distinguished by characters that might not be 
included in the variations of a single species. 
In regard to the specific determination of the species which 
I examined in Florida it should be mentioned that the form 
occurring at and near Daytona has been kindly compared 
by M. Bornet with specimens of C. coeruleus from Porto Rico in 
Montagne’s herbarium with which it seems to be beyond ques- 
tion identical. The Cocoanut Grove material, however, though 
it can hardly be separated by any distinctive microscopic char- 
acters, is macroscopically strikingly different when fresh, being 
paler greenish in color, soft and pliable to the touch, and much 
smaller: for though its filaments are rarely more than five or 
six inches long those of the Daytona material normally attain a 
length of two feet or more, their diameter being proportionately 
greater ; while the whole plant has a characteristically harsh 
stiff feel and a deeper and more striking violet-blue-green color. 
Whether these peculiarities should be attributed to a specific 
difference, or whether they merely represent variations of a single 
species due to a slight difference of environment resulting from the 
presence or absence of tidal influence, for example, is uncertain. 
In either case the younger filaments and their branches consist 
of single rows of rather flattish cells with numerous oval to 
oblong or nearly spherical chloroplasts, some of which lie 
immediately about the conspicuous nucleus ; while the greater 
part are peripherally disposed, being held in a protoplasmic 
reticulum (fig. z), the active circulation in which is very con- 
Spicuous. These chloroplasts, which often exhibit a slow change 
of position in the protoplasmic mesh, vary but slightly in shape, 
and in no instance were any elongate or thread-like forms seen 
like those described and figured by Schmitz (/. c.) as character- 
istic of C. coeruleus. The filaments increase in length through 
intercalary divisions, and at no great distance from the terminal 
cell longitudinal septa begin to make their appearance, irregularly 
at first, but succeeding one another in such a fashion that a cen- 
tral axial cell comes to be separated from a layer of peripheral 
