well to record the circumstance by a figure representing one of 

 the specimens picked up on the Irish coast, for which, among 

 many others, the University Herbarium is indebted to the libe- 

 rality of Miss Ball, a lady who has done much to illustrate the 

 Irish Cryptogamic Flora, The present plant is in many respects 

 the most interesting of her discoveries, should it eventually be 

 established as a British species. Even on the continent, as far 

 as we know, it is an extremely local and rare species, and is the 

 only member of the genus to which it belongs which occurs in 

 a northern latitude. 



The name Carpomitra is proposed by Kiitzing for those species 

 of the Agardhian genus Sporochnus which have terminal, sessile 

 fruit, namely C Cabrera and C. inermis. With the latter species 

 I am unacquainted, except by Turner's figure, and am not quite 

 sure that it is a congener; but another species {C. Haliseris, 

 Harv.) recently described by Dr. Hooker and myself, is closely 

 related to C. Cabrera, from which it chiefly differs in having a 

 frond nearly as wide and as distinctly ribbed as Haliseris poly - 

 jjodioides. It is a native of New Zealand. We thus have a new 

 instance, interesting because occurring in so limited and peculiar 

 a genus, of analogous forms inhabiting similar climates of the 

 northern and southern hemisphere. 



C. Cabrera was first described by Clemente in his list of 

 Spanish Algae, published 1804, being named by him "in honour 

 of one of his fellow-labourers in the investigation of the botany 

 of Spain, Don Antonia Cabrera, Canon of the Church of Cadiz, 

 and it must be allowed/' continues Mr. Turner, " that he has 

 chosen for his friend a curious plant." — There is no British Alga 

 with which the student can well confound it. Some very narrow 

 varieties of Dictyota diehotoma faintly resemble it, but it requires 

 a very slight examination to distinguish it from them. 



Fig. 1. Carpomitra Cabrebje: — natural size. 2. Part of a branch, showing 

 the barren and fertile apices. 3. View of the surface of the frond. 4. Trans- 

 verse section of a branch. 5. Receptacle of fruit. G. Transverse section 

 of the same. 7. Verticellate filaments, and spores from the same: — all 

 magnified. 



