in luxuriance, and in the purity and depth of their colour, as their 
habitat is remote from high water; and those which are collected 
in deep rock-basins, at the verge of the tide, are remarkably 
handsome. So common a plant could not escape notice from 
the earliest time, and consequently we find it mentioned both i 
Theophrastus and Dioscorides. A characteristic figure, for the 
age, 1s given by Dillenius ; and it received its present name in the 
Species Plantarum of Linnzeus. 
Though it varies in some degree in the number of its ramuli, 
which on some specimens are closely crowded together, distant 
and few on others; yet there is always such a similarity in 
habit between all states of the plant, and such an identity of 
colour (and that a remarkably darf colour for the genus), that 
few persons who have once seen this species will mistake it for 
anything else. The only puzzling variety which I have met with 
is what I have called var. 8. distorta, and this is only puzzling if 
seen for the first time in the study. In the field it still retains so 
much of the appearance of stunted forms of the species, that its 
difference of general habit does not deceive a practised eye; and 
its habitat is quite sufficient to account for the distorted forms it 
assumes. It is found, in the locality dicated, forming scab- ~ 
like patches on the naked surface of the peat, just within the 
limit of the tide, im company with Codiwm amphibium and Cate- 
nella opuntia. A habitat more unlike that usually occupied by C. 
rupestris can scarcely be imagined. ‘The species is therefore 
struggling hard against circumstances, on the confines of its 
capability of growing. 
Fig. 1. Chapornora RUPESTRIS—tuft :—of the natural size. 2. Portion of a 
branch :--magnified. 3. Some of the ramuli :—more highly magnified. 
