Halsted.] 170 [March 5, 
By means of the Braun, Rabenhorst and Stitzenberger Char- 
aces Exsiccatae in Dr. W. G. Farlow’s private collection, Nordstedt 
and Wohlstedt’s Scandinavian Characee, and the general foreign 
collection in the Gray Herbarium, the American specimens have been 
compared directly with those of other countries. 
The members of this distinct group of Cryptogams are all filamen- 
tous, submerged, aquatic plants, to the naked eye either green or 
ashy gray in color, depending upon the presence or absence of a 
calcareous incrustation. The plants are attached by a long, colorless, 
root-like structure to the muddy bottom of the pond or stream in 
which they grow, and often form dense masses varying according to 
the species from a few inches to two or three feet in height. They 
are remarkable for their large thin-walled cells and the cyclosis of 
their contents. 
In number there is something over a hundred species. 
Development : — At the upper end of the spore there is first pro- 
duced by division a thin-walled, hemispherical shaped cell. This 
cell soon divides into two by a cell-wall parallel to the longer axis of 
the spore. Both of these new cells increase in size and push them- 
selves out between the separating ends of the fine enveloping spirals, 
one turning downward to become the primary rhizoid, the other 
upward to form the proembryo. ‘The proembryo, the upper 
portion of which is green, consists of but a few alternating nodal and 
internodal cells). When the Chara plant develops, one of the disc- 
shaped nodal cells divides up first into two, and afterwards, by suc- 
cessive divisions, into a number of cells, the largest one of which be- 
comes the initial cell, or punctum vegetationis of the future plant. 
From this cell by further growth and repeated cell division the Chara 
plant is developed. 
Antheridia (globules) : —- These, the male organs, are situated on 
the leaves and are often of an orange color, and from .50 to .75 mm. 
in diameter. The wall consists of eight cells called shields, closely 
joined by their serrate edges. The four basal ones are somewhat 
four sided; the upper four triangular. From the centre of each 
shield-cell there projects into the interior of the antheridium an ob- 
long cell called the manubrium. Each manubrium is surmounted by 
a smaller cell known as a capitulum. The capitula end in turn in 
six secondary capitula from each of which grow four long flagelliform 
threads which are composed of small disc-shaped cells. The anthe- 
rozoids are borne singly in the cells. When free from the cell the an- 
