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REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 171
rising from a creeping base, capillary, alternately decompound, branches multifid,
attenuate, branchlets filiform, internodes once and a half as long as broad.
Var. Westpointensis, Harv.
More slender and delicate.
Jackson Ferry, N. Y.; Newburyport, Mass., Harvey; Providence, R. I., Mr. Olney;
Gloucester, Mass.? W. G. F. The variety at West Point.
The present species is with difficulty distinguished from P. Olneyi, which, in its turn, too closely
approaches P. Harveyi. The two last-named species are attached by a small disk, and the filaments do
not rise from a creeping base, as in the present species. The vertical filaments of P. subtilissima are of a
purple color, and are fine and soft, and the cells are not much longer than broad. We have seen
specimens collected by Mr. Olney near Providence which may with certainty be referred to the present,
and have found floating in ditches at Gloucester tufts of a very dark, delicate species which may
probably be referred to it. The specimens were apparently washed from some muddy shore, but the
creeping basal filaments could not be seen. Gloucester collectors should search for the plant in muddy
ditches towards Little Good Harbor.
P. OLNEYI, Harv., Ner. Am. Bor., Part II, Pl. 17 b.—Dough Balls.
Fronds brownish red, densely tufted, from two to five inches high, filaments
capillary, much branched, branches patent or divaricate, decompound, attenuated
above, with scattered slender branchlets, internodes three or four times as broad
below, becoming shorter above; antheridia ellipsoidal, not mucronate; cystocarps
broadly ovate, nearly sessile.
On Zostera.
From New York to Halifax, most common south of Cape Cod.
The present species passes by numerous forms into P. Harveyi, and in spite of the marked difference in
the typical forms of the two species, the question remains to be settled whether P. Olneyi is not a
slender variety of P. Harveyi. In its typical form P. Olneyi forms dense soft tufts, sometimes called
dough-balls by the sea-shore population. The filaments are divaricately branched below, but the upper
branches are slender and erect and beset with fine byssoid branchlets. When old, however, the lower
branches become rigid, and the branchlets rather spine-like, as in the next species. Both P. Olneyi and
P. Harveyi are very common from Cape Cod to New York, growing usually on Zostera in shallow, quiet
bays. As they mature they fall from the Zostera and are blown into small coves, the bottoms of which
are sometimes almost carpeted with the globose tufts of these two species, which lie loosely on the
bottom. The typical forms of the present species collapse at once when removed from the water.
P. HARVEYI, Bail.; Ner. Am. Bor., Part II, Pl. 17 a.—Nigger Hair Pl. XV, Figs. 3, 4.
Fronds blackish red, globosely tufted, filaments two to six inches high, setaceous,
when young with a leading axis, becoming divaricately much branched, branches
alternately decompound, patent, often angularly bent, beset with numerous short,
simple or forked, spine-like