C 494 3 
XXII. On the Fructification of the submersed Alga. By Mr. 
Correa de Serra, F. R. S. 
Read June 16, 1796. 
The light which the prevailing spirit of inquiry and obser- 
vation has thrown on the means of reproduction allowed by 
nature to vegetable beings, is not yet equally diffused over all 
of them. Those whose simpler organization seems, when exa- 
mined, to want some of the parts which we are accustomed to 
consider as essential to generation, continue to the present mo- 
ment more or less involved in darkness ; and their fecundation, 
and means of reproduction, are still objects of doubt and inquiry. 
Amongst them the Fuci, Ceramiums, Ulvae, Confervas, all sub- 
mersed algae, are perhaps in the number of the less illustrated. It 
is probable that their peculiar way of living, which requires from 
nature a particular modification in the parts destined to repro- 
duce them, as well as in the means of performing this opera- 
tion, has been the principal cause of the perplexity of naturalists 
on this subject. They have either sought for things in their 
ordinary form, which nature furnishes to these plants under a 
different one, adapted to their circumstances; or they have 
thought that she deviates from her usual ways, when she only 
makes use of her stubborn versatility, enforcing the execution 
of her general plan, by the means which at first sight seem to 
make her deviate from it. In the present memoir I shall 
