78 
Druce^ on Confervoide(je. 
difficult to reconcile with it. Recollecting^ however, that in 
(Edogonium the ordinary zoospore is formed from the whole 
contents of the cell, we may conceive each characium to be 
the primordial utricle, full of antheridial capsules, which 
burst within it, freeing the antherozoids into its cavity before 
the dehiscence of the lid. This process I have also been so 
fortunate as to witness ; the characium being full of globular 
bodies, and presenting a totally diiferent appearance to that 
of the same phytoid at a later stage, when the antherozoids 
are swarming up to the lid, after the manner of the Des- 
midese ; the only difference being, that this aggregation of the 
antheridial capsules is discharged from the parent cell at an 
earlier period, and provided with sufficient vegetative life to 
enable it to elaborate the antheridia independently. 
It further appears to me, that the generative act in Con- 
fervse may, and probably does, take place at all periods of the 
year ; that spores, formed by conjugation and otherwise in the 
spring, are fecundated at once by the antherozoids after the 
manner I have named ; whilst in the summer, in QEdogonia 
the vegetative process is too active to wait for the develop- 
ment of the antheridia within the parent cell ; the cycle of 
their life hurries on, and the whole aggregation of antheri- 
dial capsules is emitted as a zoospore. The resting spores 
only attract attention in the autumn, because their appearance 
is more distinctive, and they are provided with additional 
envelopes to enable them to withstand the rigour of winter. 
Other occurrences there are more difficult to account for, but 
the supposition that the antheridial capsules may become 
encysted for the winter, like the resting spores, will go far to 
explain it, if it may only be received. I have noticed a 
swarming of minute gonidia in quite young cells of CEdogo- 
nium, radient with Chlorophylls, these atoms crowded to one 
end of each cell as if to escape ; but of this there was no 
probability ; and perhaps, although I do not speak this upon 
the authority of further observations, these represented the 
microgonidia of Hydrodictyon, but became encysted within 
the parent cells. Pringsheim has noticed that encysted 
bodies in Spirogyra produced small zoospores. Now I have 
no doubt that here the encysted bodies are the large colour- 
less zoospores; the development of the antherozoids being 
arrested by the approach of winter. In Sph(Eroplea annulina, 
in which the only difference seems to be that the primordial 
utricle forms one antheridial capsule, instead of subdividing 
into many, Cohn has witnessed the fertilization of the spores 
by the antherozoids resembling exactly those I have seen in 
Spirogyra and (Edogonium. In Chlorosphsera, Professor 
