TRANSACTIONS. 
On CHLORosPHiERA, « uew Genus of Uni-cellular Fresh-water 
AlgcB. By Arthur Henfrey, F.K.S.L.S.,, &c., Professor 
of Botany in King^s College^ London. 
The somewhat remarkable object of this notice was found 
by my friend Mr. D. Oliver, in water from bogs at Prestwick 
Carr_, Northumberland, in March, 1857. It has been kept 
in cultivation both by Mr. Oliver and myself for many 
months, and we have seemingly sufficient evidence that it is 
an independent organism, although we have not yet been 
able to observe all the stages of its development. 
The ordinary appearance of the plant is that of a large green 
globe, like a large spore, lying free in the water, or often 
gathered in loose groups upon decaying vegetable structures, 
such as leaves of Sphagnum contained in the water. The 
globe is a single, simple cell, with a thin membranous coat 
surrounding a mass of usually green granular contents. We 
have been unable to prove that the membrane of the cell 
is composed of cellulose ; but except that it does not give a 
distinct blue colour with iodine, it has all the characters of 
ordinary vegetable cell-membrane. The contents of per- 
fectly healthy specimens completely fill the cell, but by 
pressure or by producing endosmose it is easy to show the 
existence of the boundary wall. The contents of well- 
developed examples are often so dense and so darkly coloured 
with chlorophyll, that no internal characters can be distin- 
guished (Plate III, figs. 2 — 4) ; in other cases the green 
colour is less intense, and then we may often detect a kind 
of radiated arrangement of the green granules (fig. 5). The 
condition of the green matter appears to vary also, for some- 
times it appears in the form of fine homogeneous granular 
substance, sometimes it consists of a great number of gfeen 
corpuscles of larger size, the number and depth of colour 
of these depending apparently upon the activity of the 
nutrition. With the normal green globes occur many other 
forms, which are referable either to stages of reproduction 
or to conditions of disease. We shall consider these pre- 
sently. The vegetative growth of this plant is at the same 
time a process of multiplication. Each cell produces two, or 
more rarely four, new ones. The approach of the cell- divi- 
sion is marked by the increasing density and homogeneity 
VOL. VII. d 
