ARCHER ON A NEW SPECIES OF BULBOCHJETE, AGARDU. 13 



This condition may provisionally be indicated briefly as ' gynandro- 

 sporous,' by which is intended to be expressed that the spores or asex- 

 ually-developed propagative cells, from which the males originate, ordi- 

 narily occur upon the female plants." 



The author then goes on, as touching this subject, to indicate cer- 

 tain other possible cases in other families where a gynandrosporous 

 plan of fructification may prevail, into which it would be here unne- 

 cessary, however interesting, to enter any further. 



But, if the foregoing extract should be thought to convey the idea, 

 because Pringsheim speaks of the androspores forming in structure and 

 size a middle stage between zoospores and antherozoids, and because he 

 mentions an almost imperceptible transition in the conditions from the 

 monoecious species to those with dwarf males, that he therefore holds that 

 there is no fixity or permanence to be observed in the individual spe- 

 cies themselves, I fear it would be doing an injustice to the views on 

 that point which he actually expresses. He rightly, indeed, throws 

 overboard the distinctions drawn from length and breadth of cells, and 

 such like, as of only subordinate value ; but, on the other hand, he holds, 

 as I think most justly, that the characters and conditions presented by 

 the fructification, its form and plan, combined with the minor special- 

 ties previously used as distinguishing characters, afford data abundantly 

 sufficient and constant to distinguish the species. Let me venture to 

 add a line or two more from the same memoir:* 4 — 



"That these characteristics represent essential peculiarities of the spe- 

 cies is spoken for by their unchangeableness, of which an observation, 

 continued for many years, of the forms recurring every summer in the 

 same localities under similar appearances, has satisfied me ; likewise the 

 maintenance of these specialties of form in the culture of the plants in a 

 room affords a sufficient proof for their constancy under altered conditions 

 of life. It is indifferent, however, how we may think as regards species 

 and their constancy — so much is certain that the same forms are always 

 again to be found, and that they can be recognised and distinguished 

 with the greatest certainty from the characters indicated by me as 

 essential." 



There is no doubt, so far as I can see, indeed, but that the conditions 

 of the fructification, whether monoecious, dioecious, or gynandrospo- 

 rous — (the latter type prevails throughout in the genus Bulbochsete) — 

 the form of the oospores and the oogonia, and the mode whereby the 

 latter open, the number and place of the antheridia, the position of the 

 mother- cells of androspores in the gynandrosporous species, as well 

 as the position and structure and relative dimensions of the dwarf males, 

 as also the characters of form and size deducible from the vegetative 

 parts, with general dimensions and habit — all these combined, and taken 

 with their special modifications, form a series of characters, which, ac- 

 cording to the mode in which they are relatively presented, afford data 

 by which we can always and at once know the same thing by its tout 



* Loc. cit., p. 63. 



