•Vermont Botanical and Bird Cr.un 13 



quaintance with the flowering plants — and then there will be the club- 







mosses and ferns and their allies. Allow five years for those — and 

 then there will be the fungi and lichens. Allow 10 years for those, and 

 then there are the mosses and liverworts. Allow 10 years more, and 

 then there are the algae. If anyone thinks to know all the algae of 

 Vermont he will die of exasperation if not of old age. 



In climbing down the family tree of the plant kingdom, further- 

 more, the farther down we get, the smaller are the plants. We can 

 manage fairly well with a hand lens until we get to the algae perhaps, 

 but there we must have a compound microscope — that's one reason 

 why many of us have never climbed down among these interesting 

 plants. Not alone this, but the base of the tree stands in water. The 

 mosses and liverworts lead us to the water's edge, and when we go 

 down farther we get into water — I might say into deep water. 



The algae, then, comprise the plants at the lower confines of the 

 vegetable kingdom. They are for the most part, so far as fresh water 

 forms are concerned, plants of microscopic size living in water or in 

 moist situations, of various colors and simple structure. They may be 

 separated into six groups, namely, the Myxophyceae or blue green 

 algae, the Chlorophyceae. or simple green algae, the Zygophyceae, or 

 conjugate algae, the Siphonophyceae, or tube algae, the Phaeophyceae, 

 or brown algae, and the Rhodophyceae. or red algae. 



The lowest and simplest of the algae make up the blue-green group. 

 These plants are of one cell, in which there is no definite nucleus or 

 chloroplast, the contents being nearly homogeneous. The cell-wall of 

 these plants is not composed of true cellulose, but of a sort of gela- 

 tinous substance similar to animal cell-wall in composition. On ac- 

 count of the nature of the cell-wall and the simple fission method of 

 propagation, the plants give rise to colonies of plants, which appear as 

 blue-green masses, often in chains or filaments. As a representative of 

 one of the first subdivisions of this group we may consider the genus 

 Chi'oococcus, the plants of which are spherical, and whose species are 

 of various colors. The gray, blue, brown, red, yellow, orange and violet 

 colorings seen on our moist cliffs are often due to microscope algae of 

 this group. What at first appears as a stain upon a rock may often 

 prove a colony of these simple plants, and in this group the gelatinous 

 sheath is not noticeable to the unaided eye. This group bears per- 

 haps the closest resemblance to bacteria, and were not bacteriology 

 elevated to the position of a separate science we should have to in- 

 clude bacteria in a study of the algae. 



