Ser. CHLOROSPERMEE. Fam. Confervee. 
Puate CL. 24. 
CONFERVA LINUM, Rots. 
Gen. Cuar. Filaments green, jomted, attached, or floating, unbranched. 
Fruit, aggregated granules, or zoospores, contained in the joints, 
having, at some period, a proper ciliary motion. Conrerva (P/in.) 
—trom conferruminare, to consolidate; because some of the species 
were used by the ancients in cases of fractured bones. 
Conrerva Jinwm ; filaments very thick, of great length, light or dark green 
according to age, much curled, rigid, forming loosely entangled, harsh 
strata; articulations as long as broad. 
Conrerva linum, Roth. Cat. Bot. vol. i. p. 174. and iii. p. 257. Fl. Dan. 
p- 771. f.2. #. Bot. t. 2363. dg. Syst. p. 97. Jurg.! vol. iii no. 10. 
Lyngb. Hyd. Dan. p. 147. t. 50. Kiitz. Phyc. Gen. p. 260. (not of Hook. Br. 
Fl. or Harv. Man.) . 
Conrerva capillaris, Huds. Fl. dng. p. 598. Lightf. Fl. Scot. p. 988. Ditto. 
Conf. t. 9. 
Conrerva crassa, dg. Syst. p.99. Harv. in Hook. Br. Fl. vol. ii. p. 352. 
Harv. in Mack. Fl. Hib. vol. ii. p. 225. Harv. Man. p.129. Kiitz. Phyc. 
Gen. p. 260. 
Has. In salt-water ditches, near the coast. 
Geoer. Distr. Shores of Europe. 
Descr. Filaments from a few inches to several feet in length, twice as thick as 
hog’s bristle, very much curled, rigid, crisp and brittle, soon becoming 
flaccid if exposed in the air; lying in thick, but not dense, bundles of 
considerable breadth, disposed in strata, one above the other. 4rticula- 
tions about as long as broad, filled with granular fluid, which in some joints 
is more dense than in others. Eventually the joints divide in the centre by 
a transverse line, and the mass separates ; a new diaphragm is then gradually 
formed, and finally a new joint. This species varies much in colour, being 
sometimes of a pale, at other times a dark green, and is very often mottled 
with dark and light green. Sudstance rigid-membranous, scarcely adhering 
to paper in drying. 
The plant now figured is what, m British works, is usually 
called C. crassa, a name which origiated with Agardh, who 
regarded the Conf. capillaris of Dillwyn, (Conf. linum of E. Bot.) 
as being different specifically from the original C. num of Fl. Dan., 
and founded a new species upon it. I rather hastily adopted his 
view in the Br. Flora; and still more incorrectly I took up, from 
the ‘Algze Appinenses’ of Carmichael, another species under the 
name of C. num, which is quite unlike the plant so called by 
Roth. That species will be figured in a future number. With 
regard to the C./imum of Roth; that it is the same as our 
British plant commonly called C. crassa, was the opinion of 
