as six or eight, when the plant becomes exceedingly feathery and delicate. 
Stem and branches opake, without visible articulations, coated with sinuous, 
narrow veins ; lesser branches toward the upper part gradually more clearly 
joimted, with swollen joints, the articulations once and a half to twice as 
long as broad; small branches and ramuli all pellucidly articulate, two- 
tubed, with short joints; their tips copiously clothed with dichotomous 
fibrils. A cross section of the stem shows four large tubes, surrounding 
a minute cavity and clothed externally with a broad stratum of cells ; all 
coloured. Capsules ovate, scattered over the lesser branches and generally 
sessile. Tetraspores large, imbedded in the ramuli. Colour, when growing 
(as the plant often does) in sunny pools, a pale straw-yellow ; when de- 
veloped in darker places, more or less deeply brown: in drying it becomes 
always darker and usually of a rich reddish-brown. Swhstance cartilaginous 
in the stem, very soft and gelatino-membranaceous in the ramuli. It closely 
adheres to paper in drying, and soon decomposes in fresh water or the air. 
CRA 
teat 
A common plant, subject to many variations in form, but 
generally recognized by its somewhat clumsy, unjomted stems, 
and short, soft, and gelatinous ramuli copiously fibrillose at the 
tips. It is most nearly related to P. violacea, with which alone 
can it well be confounded, and from which it chiefly differs in 
its shorter and less multifid ramuli, duller colour, and shorter 
articulations ; but there are specimens occasionally found which 
seem almost to connect these two species together. 
I have not enumerated the continental P. allochroa among 
the synonyms, not having examined an authentically named 
specimen of that species ; but what I have received from several 
correspondents under that name does not appear to me to differ 
essentially from P. fidrillosa of British authors. 
Fig. 1. PoLystPHONIA FIBRILLOSA :—the natural size. 2. A small branch. 
3. Fibril from one of the tips of the same. 4. Branchlets with a capsule. 
5. Branchlet with tetraspores. 6. Portion of the lower part of the stem. 
7. Transverse section of the same. 
