LIFE HISTORY OF A FILIFORM ALGA 
75 
although the hand of man is ever doing its best to 
improve them off the face of the earth. Instead of 
leaving ns Nature unadorned, as we love to see her, public 
corporations always want to do too much, and convert 
our Epping Forests or Sutton Parks into ornamental tea 
gardens. 
Some dead rushes were bent down near the edge of the 
pool, and totally immersed in the water. The naked eye 
was quite sufficient to discern that these rushes were covered 
with slender delicate filaments which floated out for half an 
inch into the surrounding water, almost of the colour of 
whitcy-brown paper. Several of the most promising rushes 
were drawn out of the water, cut into short lengths, and 
placed in a glass tube, carefully corked, and transferred to 
the pocket. It matters not what else was collected during 
the day, since it is only of these delicate floating filaments 
found attached to the dead rushes that I desire to speak. It 
may be taken for granted that they were the filaments of a 
filamentous, or thread-like Water Alga, growing attached to 
dead plants. All that we would learn of them beyond this 
must be discovered by the use of the microscope. 
I will not detain you with any details of manipulation ; 
suffice it to say that a little of this floating mass, taken off on 
the point of a sharp penknife, was placed in a drop of water, 
and submitted to inspection under a quarter of an inch 
objective. The first glance was sufficient to show that it was 
a species of the genus (Edoyonium. But why? I will endeavour 
to explain. 
In the first place all the threads are discovered to bo 
simple, without branches of any kind from the base to the 
apex, and these threads parted off by transverse partitions 
or septa at regular distances throughout their entire length. 
We will call these joints, or the intermediate space between any 
two of the partitions, a cell. These threads are made up, then, 
of a series of elongated cylindrical cells, attached end to end, 
so as to form a filament, it may be half an inch in length. 
Each of these cells contains within it a granular matter, at one 
time wholly green, but now partially discoloured, which we 
will call the cell contents. Looking again carefully at the 
membrane which constitutes the wall or boundary of these 
cells, we soon observe that some of the cells have delicate 
parallel lines or striae crossing them near the top, and some 
of the cells have none. Whatever these lines may be, and we 
shall endeavour to discover their meaning presently, it is due 
to their presence that we have been able to affirm at once 
that this Alga is a species of (Eduyonium . 
