MARINE BOTANY. 79 



ranean, and affects in England a similar locality. Those 

 who seek on rocks, or in pellucid basins, for the elegant 

 Hutchinsiae, often regret to find the one, where they would 

 gladly have hailed the other. When seen under water, the 

 resemblance is considerable, both in form and hue, though, 

 in general, the spreading Cladophora is a much larger and 

 stronger plant. 



Equally abounding on all our rocky shores, from Orkney 

 to Cornwall, ranging also amid the wild wave's play 

 throughout the Atlantic coasts of Europe and North 

 America, with those of the Baltic, Dr. Hooker speaks of the 

 C. arcta, as growing profusely in the Falkland Islands, and 

 he conjectures that it is distributed in all southern latitudes, 

 wherever a similar climate prevails. Those who seek for 

 this rich deep-green and tufted species may generally find 

 it on exposed submarine rocks, within the range of the tide, 

 nearly at the limit of low- water mark ; and in such places 

 it often covers a considerable surface. When young, the 

 colour is peculiarly vivid ; and in spring, few objects are 

 more attractive, on account of their lively green, and the 

 fine, silky, silvery gloss with which the tips are adorned. 

 But when old, the Arcta has little of outward beauty ; the 

 branches become more or less membranaceous, the bright 

 colour lingers only at their tips, and when the summer 

 months verge on those of autumn, the whole plant becomes 

 coarse and woolly, no trace remains of its youthful beauty ; 

 and hence marine botanists, in former days, when the 

 science was imperfectly understood, assumed that the Arcta, 

 in its stages of growth and decay, were different plants, and 

 gave them the names of Vauchericeformis and Centralis. 



The pellucid Cladophora clings, in its distinctiveness, to 

 the bottom and sides of deep rock-pools, between tide-marks, 

 in places which are not liable to be left dry by the receding 

 of the tide. Though occasionally mistaken, at first sight, 

 for others of the same tribe, it has yet one distinctive mark, 

 in a single cell being found intervening between each fur • 



