212 
SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
Hybrid Moss.* — Mrs. E. G. Britton records an example of bybridity 
in mosses between Aphanorhegma serrata as the female, and Physcomitrium 
turbinatum as the male parent. 
Babenhorst’s Cryptogamic Flora of Germany (Musci). — The second 
division of Yol. IV. of this work is completed with Pt. 26, which is 
devoted to the remaining genera of Leskeacese, viz. Pterogonium (1 sp.), 
Pterigynandrum (1 sp.), Lescursea (2 sp.), Ptychodium (5 sp.), Pseudo - 
leshea (1 sp.), Eeterocladium (4 sp.), and Thuidium (12 sp.). Pt. 27 
commences the Hypnacese, divided into three groups, the Isothecieae, 
Brachythecieae, and Hypneae. All the genera of Isothecieae are treated 
in the present part, viz. Cylindrothecium (4 sp.), Climacium (1 sp.), 
Isothecium (2 sp.), Orthothecium (6 sp.), Eomalothecium (2 sp.), Platy - 
gyrium (1 sp.), and Pylaisia (5 sp.). A commencement is made of the 
Brachythecieae with Camptotliecium (4 sp.), and a portion of Bracliythe- 
oium , numbering about 40 species. 
Characeae. 
Babenhorst’s Cryptogamic Flora of Germany (Characeae). — A large 
portion of the last two parts of Prof. W. Migula’s exhaustive monograph 
of the Characeae (Nos. 10 and 11) is occupied by the very numerous 
subspecies, varieties, and forms of Chara foetida , hispida, and aspera t 
which are treated in great detail, and many of them figured. The other 
species described and delineated are Chara Babenhorstii, crassicaulis , 
rudis , horrida, and galioides. 
Algae. 
Food-Materials of Algae.j — Prof. H. Molisch has determined that a 
considerable number of Algae — Microthamnion, Stichococcus, (Jlothrix, and 
Protococcus — are entirely independent, like certain Fungi, of calcium 
for their nutriment. It follows that calcium-salts are not a neces- 
sary constituent of every living cell ; and that cell-walls, nuclei, and 
chlorophyll-grains can be developed perfectly independently of this 
element. 
Swarmspores of Tilopterideae.t — Herr P. Kuckuck has made a 
careful examination of Eaplospora Vidovicchii from the Mediterranean. 
He finds it to be propagated by non-motile “ monospores,” similar to 
those described by Beinke in the case of E. globosa,§ but differing from 
those of that species in containing only a single nucleus instead of four. 
The author considers them to be unquestionably of non-sexual origin. He 
states, moreover, that the thallus contains also chromatophores, physodes, 
and pyrenoids, the latter not having been previously observed in the 
Tilopterideae. But, in addition to the non-motile monospores, the alga 
produced also (in cultivation) unilocular zoosporanges ; and on this 
account he proposes to establish for it a new genus Heterospora , differing 
from Haplospora in the presence of pyrenoids in the chromatophores, in 
the monospores being nucleated, and in the second mode of propagation 
by means of large biciliated zoospores. 
* Proc. Amer. Ass. Adv. Sci., 1894 (1895) p. 292. 
t SB. K. Akad. Wiss. Wien, July 11, 1895. Cf. this Journal, 1895, p. 545. 
X Jalirb. f. wiss. Bot. (Pfeffer u. Strasburger), xxviii. (1895) pp. 291-322 (1 pi. 
and 1 fig.). § Cf. this Journal, 1889, p. 419. 
