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REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 157
inches long, branches elongated, irregularly placed, clothed below with numerous,
short, subulate branchlets, thickened and nearly naked near the apex, which is often
much incurved; tetraspores zonate, borne in somewhat swollen branchlets;
cystocarps subglobose, numerous, on divaricately branched spinescent branchlets.
New Bedford, Mass., Harvey; Wood’s Holl, W. G. F; Orient, L. I., Miss Booth; and
southward to the West Indies.
In four or five fathoms of water.
A common species of the West Indies, and probably not rare in Long Island Sound, although not very
common. It is usually found washed ashore in sheltered places like the Little Harbor, Wood’s Holl, after
a heavy blow, where one sometimes finds intricately twisted tufts two feet in diameter. With us
cystocarps have not been seen, but the frond is very well developed on our coast. It may be recognized
by the yellowish-purple color, by the long branches covered with short, subulate branchlets, and
especially by the swollen, naked apices, which are rolled strongly inwards or almost circinate. Fertile
specimens from the West Indies are more robust and do not so frequently have inrolled apices. The
species does not adhere well to paper in drying.
SUBORDER GELIDIEÆ.
Fronds of a dense cartilaginous structure, filiform or compressed, branching;
antheridia in superficial patches; tetraspores cruciate, borne in the cortical layer;
cystocarps formed in swollen branches and composed of spores arranged singly or in
short filaments on the surface of an axile or parietal placenta, carpostomes present,
often two in number;
Rather a small order of dark-colored, rigid sea-weeds, whose fronds are formed of densely packed cells,
and whose cystocarps are born in swollen terminal branches, but are not strictly external. In Gelidium
the spores are sessile on an axile placenta, and there are two carpostomes on the opposite surfaces of
the fronds. In Pterocladia the placenta is attanched [sic] to the lateral wall of the cystocarp, the spores
are borne few in a row, and there is but one carpostome.
GELIDIUM, Lam.x.
(From gelu, frost, and, secondarily, gelatine.)
Fronds cartilaginous, terete or compressed, decompound-pinnate, formed of long
cylindrical cells in the axis, surrounded by roundish cells which become small and
polygonal at the surface; antheridia in superficial patches; tetraspores cruciate,
scattered in the cortex; cystocarps immersed in swollen branchlets, containing
oblong or pyriform spores borne on an axile placenta which is attached by filaments
to the walls of the cystocarp; carpostomes usually one on each side of the frond.
A genus of narrowly linear or nearly terete algæ of a dense structure, found in nearly all parts of the
world. The limits of the species are not well marked, because the ramifications on which the principal
specific distinctions depend are very variable. The genus is recognized on our coast by the peculiar
cystocarps, which are formed in