290 Phillips.— -On the Development of 
is probable that the Rhodomelaceae will be less disturbed by 
the introduction of this new criterion than almost any other 
family. So far, the most important rearrangements proposed 
by Schmitz and Falkenberg ( 4 ) consist in the transference of 
four of Agardh’s list of thirty-nine genera to the Deles- 
seriaceae ; and the removal from Agardh’s Chondrieae into 
the Rhodomelaceae, of Lanrencia and certain later allied 
genera. The limits of the family are thus not seriously 
changed, and it remains one of the largest and best-defined 
of all the Floridean groups. 
Our knowledge of the minute structure of the cystocarp 
in the Rhodomelaceae, as in the rest of the Florideae, received 
a new impulse upon the publication, in 1883, of Schmitz’s 
researches upon the process of fertilization. For the first 
time the study of the development of the cystocarp in detail, 
brought up our knowledge of the morphology of the female 
reproductive organ of the Florideae, to the level which it had 
long before reached in other groups of plants. The dis- 
coveries of Schmitz are a worthy continuation of those of 
Bornet and Thuret, and Janczewski. As a result of his 
investigations, Schmitz conceived the luminous idea that the 
thallus of all Florideae (in the narrower sense in which he 
uses the term, i. e. excluding the Bangiaceae) consists of 
branched filaments ; that these filaments grow by means of 
an apical cell ; and that no segment is subsequently divided 
by a transverse septum, or by a longitudinal septum which 
passes through the organic axis. Though this theory has 
since been found by Johnson ( 5 ) and by Schmitz himself (6) 
not to hold good for the Nitophylleae. a ^single tribe of the 
Delesseriaceae, it is probably of very general application in 
the Florideae, and certainly throughout all the Rhodomelaceae. 
It was when this theory was applied to the study of the 
developing cystocarp of this family, and the cell-connexions 
traced by means of the characteristic Floridean pit, that a clue 
was first obtained to its inner structure. 
My own attention was directed to the study of this organ 
by the account given by the author of aberrations presented 
