Phycological Memoirs

Abstract

THE establishment of this new serial is an indication ot the increased attention given in this country during recent years to the study of Algæ, whether marine or fresh-water. It is intended to form a medium for the publication of the results of researches on Algæ carried on in the Department of Botany at the British Museum, and for making known the treasures of the Museum; and the present number is full of promise of valuable additions to our phycological literature. The place of honour is given to a paper by Miss Margaret O. Mitchell and Miss Frances G. Whitting on Splachnidium rugosum, a well-known seaweed of the Southern Seas, hitherto included under the Fucacœ, but which the authors regard as a new type of Algæ occupying possibly an intermediate position between the Fucacœ and the Laminariaceœ. For reasons which certainly seem cogent, they are of opinion that the reproductive organs contained in the conceptacles are not sexual oogones and antherids homologous to those of the Fucaceæ, but non-sexual sporanges containing zoo-spores similar to those of the Latninariaceœ. Mr. E. A. L. Batters describes an interesting new genus of perforating marine Algæ, Conchocelis, belonging to the order Porpthyraceœ, which forms pink stains on empty shells, especially those of Mya truncata and Solen vagina. Miss Ethel S. Barton describes malformations produced in two seaweeds, Ascopkyllum nodosum and Desmarestia aculeata, by the attacks respectively of a new species of Nematode, Tylenchus fucicolus, somewhat similar to that which produces the well-known “galls” of Vaucheria, and of an undetermined Copepod. The editor himself has two papers, one on a fossil Alga belonging to the genus Caulerpa, from the Oolite (Kimmeridge clay of Dorset shire), a new species, which he names C. Carruthersii; and one on the genus of marine Algae, Dictyosphœria, the position of which he retains among the Valoniacœ, near to Valonia and Anadyotnene. The present number is illustrated by eight well-executed plates, most of them coloured.

Phycological Memoirs.

Edited by Geo. Murray Part I. (London: Dulau and Co., 1892.)