IV. CHORDARIACE^.— Mesogloia. 127 



beautifully beaded ; more slender and much longer than in M. vermicularis ; but 

 shorter, and with more globose joints than in M. Zosterce. The colour is an oliva- 

 ceous green, becoming rather greener after the specimen has been dried. The 

 substance is very soft and gelatinous. 



My figure is taken from one of the Sand Key specimens. These are less villous^ 

 owing to youth, than most specimens of the species, and have more the aspect of 

 M. Griffithsiana, but on a close microscopic examination they appear to have aU the 

 characters proper to M. virescens. Miss Brewer's specimens are still younger, but, 

 though growing on Zostera, appear to belong to virescens and not to the following. 



Plate X. B. Jig. 1. Fronds of Mesogloia virescens^ the natural size ; jig. 2, 

 small portion of a branch, magnified ; fig. 3, peripheric filaments, attached to the 

 axial ; fig. 4, a peripheric filament removed, the latter figures highly magnified. 



3. Mesogloia Zosterce, Aresch. (?) ; frond filiform, gelatinous, flexuous, slightly 

 branched ; branches very short and subsimple, distant, villous, patent, with rounded 

 angles ; filaments of the periphery much longer than the diameter of the axis, lax, 

 submoniliform, with ellipsoidal cells, twice as long as their diameter. Mesogloia 

 Zosterce., ? ; Aresch. Pug. t. 8, /. 1, a. 6. Myriocladia Zosterce ? or M. Lovenii ? 

 J. Ag. Sp. Alg. vol. \,p. 53. (Tab. X. A.). 



Hab. On Zostera in deep water. Annual. Halifax, W. H. H. 



Fronds 6-8 inches long, very slender, filiform, flexuous or angularly bent, either 

 without lateral branches, or furnished at distant intervals with a few very short, 

 patent, or divaricating, simple or forked ramuli, from a line to an inch in length, 

 but seldom longer. These branchlets issue at very wide angles, and sometimes at 

 the point where they arise the main stem takes a bend in the opposite direction, 

 as if the proper mode of branching were dichotomous, but that one of the forks 

 were perpetually aborted into a ramulus. The peripheric filaments are much longer 

 than the diameter of the axis which they clothe, and are laxly set, surrounded by 

 a loose jelly. They are dichotomous, and spring from slender longitudinal fila- 

 ments coating the internal filaments of the axis, but which I have failed to detect 

 anastamosing into a net work, as described by J. Agardh (if we are really speaking 

 of the same plant). The articulations of the radiating filaments are fully twice as 

 long as broad, and but slightly contracted at the dissepiments. The colour in my 

 specimens is a yellowish olive. 



Few plants have been more confused by authors than the Linckia Zosterce of 

 Lyngb., Mesogloia Zosterce., Aresch. ; and I hope I am not farther confusing synonyms 

 by referring to this place the plant now described and figured. Lyngbye's figure 

 is certainly very unlike my plant, and is referred by J. Agardh to the young of 

 Mesogloia virescms, which it much more nearly resembles. But Areschoug, 

 whose figure accords more nearly with that now given than with the previous 

 figure of Lyngbye, has examined a specimen of Lyngbye's plant, and declares it 



