On the Development of the Cystocarp 
in Rhodomelaceae. 
BY 
REGINALD W. PHILLIPS. M.A., B.Sc.. 
Professor of Botany in the University College of North Wales , Bangor. 
With Plate X. 
HE Rhodomelaceae constitute one of the most natural 
X of all the families of the Red Seaweeds. They are 
characterized among other things by the globular, oval, or 
urceolate fructification, opening by a terminal pore, and 
usually standing out from the thallus, a condition which is 
familiar to us in the ‘ ceramidium 5 of the genus Polysiphonia . 
Agardh, surveying the group once more in his recent Analecta 
Algologica (1), says : — ‘Those characters which long ago (2) 
seemed to me to belong to this group : the polysiphonous 
thallus, the form and structure of the cystocarp, the nucleus 
consisting of sporiferous free threads, giving rise to pyriform 
spores in their terminal clavate joints, and finally sphaero- 
spores evolved in the pericentral cells, and arranged in a fixed 
order ; these seem to me to-day to mark out a family distinct 
from all others.’ And although Schmitz has shown (3) that 
the mode of development of the cystocarp should be an im- 
portant consideration in the taxonomy of the Florideae, it 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. IX. No. XXXIV. June. 1895.] 
