=— 
ae 
CODIUM. 341 
never seen the larger sporangia so transformed, and ven- 
ture to think that Went was in error in believing that 
that was the case. Certainly his figures lend no support 
to that view. Went considers this vegetative development 
of the sporangia as abnormal. We think, however, that 
the phenomenon is a perfectly normal one. It was 
observed by Went, in 1880, im plants obtained in the 
Gulf of Naples, and almost every plant which we examined 
from the Isle of Man, under different conditions, 20 years 
later showed these adventitious buds. On Pl. IL., figs. 
4, 8, 9, and 12, we figure some stages in the development 
of these vegetative buds, and at fig. 6, one of them isolated 
(naturally), evidently in the preliminary stages of forming 
a new plant. Further observations are, however, desirable 
on this point, observations which we hope to carry out 
later in the year. We may add that we never saw any 
evidence whatsoever of the presence of a gall-producing 
rotifer ; in all cases the contents of the filaments and the 
sporangia were perfectly normal. Possibly it may be in 
the power of some worker at the Biological Station at 
Port Erin to follow out this subject, and, by determining 
accurately the fate of the mega-spore and of the hypo- 
thetical gametes, finally settle the problem, and so add 
the last chapter to the life-history of one of the most 
interesting of our British Chlorophycee. 
