Z BRITISH CHAROPHYTA. 



observed, combined to render them attractive both to 



teacher and student. Latterly however it has been 



realised that so peculiar and isolated a group, without 



known genealogy or relationship, does not afford a 



fitting introduction to the study of plant-life in 



general. 



It was in a Charophyte that cyclosis, that is the 



rotation of the cell-contents within the cell, was first 



discovered, and the ease with which this wonderful 



phenomenon can be watched, even under a low-power 



objective, in the larger cells of any of these plants, 



added to their great beauty, has made them favourites 



with the microscopist. 



The rank which should be accorded 



^^. ^'^ „ to the Charophyta, and the relative 

 position of r ^ ' 



group position in which the group should be 



placed, have always been debatable, and 

 even at the present time much difference of opinion 

 exists among systematists upon these points. 



The early botanists, relying for the classification of 

 plants upon a superficial resemblance in their vegeta- 

 tive parts, placed the few Charophytes known to them 

 under Equisetum or Hippuris, doubtless on account of 

 their lateral members being produced in whorls. 

 Sebastien Vaillant was the first to separate them as a 

 group, when in 1719 he constituted for them a new 

 " genre " Ghara. Linnaeus, both in his natural and 

 artificial systems, treated them as a genus of Algse, 

 but in Reichard's posthumous Edition VII of the 

 ^ Grenera Plantarum ' (1778) they were transferred to 

 a place among the Flowering Plants, in Class Moncecia, 

 sect. Monandria, in which position we also find them in 

 Withering's 'Botanical Arrangement' (1776), and in 

 the second edition of Hudson's 'Flora Anglica' (1778) 



