86 Mr. C. C. Babington on the British species o/Chara. 



original idea was that the plants only formed one species, but 

 farther study has convinced me that they are far too different to 

 allow of their being lumped to that extent, and I am reduced to 

 the necessity of considering them all as distinct. They appear 

 to be very short-lived, and in all probability will be found to 

 produce two crops in the year, one in the spring and the other 

 autumnal. 



7. C. Smithii-, dioecious, stem slender equal flexible transparent, 

 branchlets blunt those forming the primary whorls simple sterile 

 long jointed (?), the others on axillary branches numerous 

 densely crowded bearing four (three short and one long) 

 bracts at their first node, globules stalked subtended by the 

 three shorter bracts, nucules unknown. 



C. nidifica, Sin. Eng. Bot. 1703 (principal figure). 



A small plant remarkable, like the following species, for its 

 birdVnest-hke masses of branchlets which spring from the axils 

 of the simple branchlets forming the primary whorls. It is only 

 known to me from the figure in ' Eng. Bot/ and from some re- 

 marks for which I am indebted to Mr. Borrer, and upon which 

 the above specific character is founded. 



As the C. nidifica (Mull.) is stated by Professor A. Braun 

 (Hook. Kew. Misc. i. 200) to be "peculiar to the north of 

 Europe, and particularly to the Baltic," and can therefore 

 scarcely be the same as this plant, which was found " in a ditch 

 which I believe the tide never reaches" (Borrer in Eng. Bot. Suppl. 

 fol. 2762, note) ; and as the plate in ' Fl. Danica ? is far too im- 

 perfect to allow of its identification with either of our Tolypella ; 

 I have thought it better, with the concurrence of Mr. Borrer, to 

 confer a new name upon this plant, which was unfortunately 

 made the representative of his C. nidifica by Smith by placing a 

 figure of it in the principal place on the plate in 1 English Bo- 

 tany/ I have the authority of the same botanist for saying that 

 the following species was the plant really intended to bear that 

 name. The confusion has originated from the idea prevalent at 

 the time when the figure was published, that the dioecious plant 

 from Lancing was a form of the monoecious one found at Cley. 

 Unfortunately these plants are so evanescent that it is only by 

 chance that they are again found in their original localities, where 

 their seeds probably remain dormant until favourable circum- 

 stances cause them to germinate. 



Lancing, Sussex (1804-5), in a ditch which the tide probably 

 never reaches ; not in Shoreham Harbour, as erroneously stated 

 in ' English Botany/ Mr. Borrer. 



Annual. Autumnal. 



