880 DR R. KIDSTON AND PROF. W. H. LANG ON OLD RED SANDSTONE PLANTS 
fig. 105 is of interest. This is a fair sample of what has been met with at certain 
spots in the upper region of the Rliynia Gwynne-Vaugliani peat in Bed A”l. Stout 
wide tubes with contracted contents are found in transverse and longitudinal section. 
The most prominent objects, however, are large oval or globular vesicles that are 
usually isolated in the matrix, but have been seen borne on, or connected with, some 
of the tubes. The vesicles are often single, but may have outgrowths from the base, 
and so be associated in pairs (fig. 107). In other cases they form rows of two or 
three (figs. 105 and 106), and sometimes indications of a node separating the vesicles 
have been seen. The thin wall of the vesicle is sometimes smooth (fig. 107), but in 
other specimens appears papillate (fig. 106, to the right.) 
The specimen shown in fig. 108 was found in the peat among such vesicles. In 
spite of its advanced decay, rendering the outline faint, an organisation of the 
tubular structures into an internode separating two nodes with verticillately 
arranged appendages can be clearly traced. This specimen also shows the tubular 
filaments with their contracted contents. 
It seems significant that globular, vesicle-like structures were met with in relation 
to the specimens we have described as Algites Cranii ( cf. fig. 98), and also in asso- 
ciation with this plant in blocks of the chert from other beds. In addition, we have 
the globular vesicles in association with Mr Cran’s specimen (figs. 96 and 97). 
While it cannot be stated definitely that these bodies are all of the same nature, it 
is a possible tentative interpretation that they all belonged to the same type of plant 
and were bulbils serving for vegetative reproduction like those in some Characeae. 
While the various remains described above differ from one another, they do so in 
a way that is consistent with their all being parts of the same plant. Their asso- 
ciation is in favour of such an interpretation, and this is supported by the fact that 
we have in one group of existing Algae much the same sort of range in morphological 
construction in different regions of the plant. The verticillately branched axes in 
figs. 93 and 108 and the nodal arrangement in fig. 94 resemble broadly what is found 
in the “shoots” of the Characeae. The simply septate filaments in figs. 98 and 99 
with occasional nodes (fig. 101) can be paralleled with the “leaves” of some 
Characeae. The rhizoid structure (figs. 103 and 104) is also only to be compared 
with that in the same group. Lastly, the large globular unicellular structures, 
including the specimen with an attached node in fig. 97 that appears to be germinat- 
ing, find a general but fairly close parallel in the type of bulbil present in Chara 
aspera * and LamprothamnusA 
These resemblances taken collectively seem to us of real significance, and are 
difficult to explain without assuming that they indicate relationship. Since, how- 
ever, no specimen of the characteristic reproductive organs of the Characeae has as 
yet been found in the Bhynie deposit, the question of the systematic position of 
Algites Cranii , and the other remains we have provisionally associated with it, is 
* Cf. Giesenhagen, Flora, lxxxii (1896), p. 381. t Cf. M‘Nicol, Ann. Bot., vol. xxi (1907), p. 61. 
