§^ Dr. R. Caspary on Furcellaria fastigiata 



coming very thin, often curved, and filled with brown grains, and 

 the epidermal cells approach them in their form because they 

 become longer, curved, lose all tendency of being placed in ra- 

 diating rows, till finally in the discs of fixation, the apices of the 

 horizontal stem and the utmost apices of the growing stem, all 

 differences of cells are abolished. The disc presents one firm 

 mass of long, irregularly curved, often parallel cells having 

 brownish grains as contents, and being transparent in their 

 walls, which no longer can be distinguished from the slimy mass 

 filUng up the intercellular spaces. 



Furcellaria fastigiata has a double fructification in different 

 individuals, both found in the often-described apical sporangia, 

 in a very unbotanist-like manner called " pods -/^ first, zonate 

 tetraspores, and secondly, large elliptical heaps of irregularly 

 shaped spores, " conceptacular fruit,^'' which was up to this time 

 a desideratum. I found this fructification in specimens of Fur- 

 cellaria fastigiata collected in January 1850 near Cromer. 



In December and January zonate tetraspores are found in the 

 sporangia, not forming exactly a stratum under the outer part of 

 the epidermal cells, but collected in irregularly placed patches. 

 The ' Manual ' by Harvey of 1849, pi. 18 C, gives for the first time 

 a representation of these tetraspores. We add a correct drawing 

 of a section of the sporangium with tetraspores in fig. 17. 



Fig. 18 represents the second sort of fruit, large elliptical heaps 

 of dark brown, irregularly polygonal or rounded spores, without 

 doubt developed altogether in one cell, surrounded with the cells 

 of the third sort, except where they border upon the epidermal 

 stratum. The second sort of cells is almost entirely wanting in 

 these sporangia ; and the fourth sort showed the peculiarity, that 

 the contents of one cell were continued through the joining ends 

 into the contents of the next cell, but this may have been a phse- 

 nomenon of incipient decay. 



A remarkable appearance, which is common to Furcellaria fas- 

 tigiata and Poll/ides rotundus, are the soft, thickened, cylindrical- 

 lanceolate, pale brown apices of some of the stems, as if they pro- 

 duced abortive sporangia. They are not only found, as Harvey 

 says, on the truncated "apices as a second growth ^^ (Phycol. 

 Brit. Furc. fast, descript. to pi. 94), but on quite sound, uninjured 

 stems ; neither on individuals only having no sporangia, as Har- 

 vey observes, but very often together with sporangia bearing 

 stems on the same bunch, although on different stems. Their 

 structure is like that of the stem. 



At the maturity of the spores the sporangia decay ; the spores 

 come out by forcing their way through the decaying epidermal 

 cells, as easily observable if they are kept for a few days in sea- 

 water, and by force of the waves the decaying sporangia are by 



