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REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 105
non-sexual spores (?) .08 mm broad by .10-12 mm long, motionless, borne on short
branches, which are at right angles to the main filaments, from which they break
off, allowing the spores to escape from the ruptured end.
Exs.—Wittrock & Nordstedt, Alg. Scand., No. 228.
On muddy shores and sides of ditches, where it forms large patches of a dark velvety
green. Summer.
Wood’s Holl, Mass.; Eastport, Maine; Perth Amboy, N. J., Wolle; Europe.
This species, which is apparently common on muddy shores of New England, agrees so well with the
description and figure of Woronin, l. c., that there can be no doubt about the identity of our plant with
that of the European coast. The non-sexual fruit was unknown to Woronin. At Wood’s Holl we found
what appeared to be the non-sexual fruit of the species. It consisted of oval spores, smaller than the
oospores, borne at the tips of short branches, which were given off at right angles to the main
filaments. The branches with the spores fall off, and the latter, after some time, escape from the
ruptured end of the cell. The spores are motionless and destitute of cilia, reminding one of the nonsexual
spores in V. geminata, Walz. During the four or five days which we were able to watch them
they underwent no change. In the specimen of Wolle, above mentioned, similar bodies are found, but
Nordstedt thinks it probable that they belong to a species different from V. Thuretii. He is led to this
conclusion apparently from the fact that the filaments bearing the non-sexual spores are rather smaller
than those which bear the oospores and antheridia. In the Wood’s Holl specimens the filaments were,
as a rule, somewhat smaller than those bearing the oospores; but the difference is very slight, and one
sometimes finds oosporiferous filaments measuring only .03 mm in diameter, while the non-sexual sporebearing
filaments average from .04-5 mm in diameter. In one case we found an antheridium on the nonsexual
spore-bearing filament, which resembled precisely the antheridia of V. Thuretii We conclude
then that the non-sexual spores probably belong to the present species, but the question requires
further examination. A specimen of what appears to be the same species exists in the collection of the
Boston Society of Natural History. It was collected by Prof. J. W. Bailey from some locality near New
York, and is labelled, in his own handwriting, V. velutina.
V. LITOREA, Nordstedt (Ag., Spec. Alg., p. 463.—V. clavata, Lyngb., Hydrophyt. Dan.,
p. 78, Pl. 21 d.— V. litorea, Nordstedt, in Botan. Notiser., 1879, p. 180, Pl. 2, Figs. 1-
6.—V. piloboloides, Farlow, List of Marine Algæ, 1876.)
Diœcious; filaments densely tufted, rather rigid, .10 mm in diameter; antheridia?;
oogonia club-shaped, borne on a short sterile cell at the tips of short recurved
branches, .20 mm broad by about .35 mm long; oospores filling the upper part of
oogonium, spheroidal, .18-19 mm broad by .23-25 mm long; cell-wall dense, .02 mm in
thickness; non-sexual spores?
At low-water mark in the gravel.
Parker’s Point, Wood’s Holl, Mass.; Europe.
We refer to the present species a Vaucheria much coarser than the species last described, which forms
rather bristly tufts of a dingy green, from two to four inches high, in gravelly places. Only one
specimen, collected in August, 1876, was in fruit,