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THE MARINE ALGÆ OF NEW ENGLAND.
de Terre-Neuve.—Alaria Pylaii, Ner. Am. Bor.—A. esculenta, var., Post. & Rupr.,
Illustr. Alg., Pl. 18.)
Base of lamina cuneate, fructiferous leaflets obovate-spathulate.
Common on exposed coasts at low-water mark and below, from Nahant northward.
The variety at Eastport, Maine, Northern Europe, and Pacific coast.
As yet no species of Alaria has been found south of Cape Cod, although it is probable that they occur at
exposed points like Gay Head and Montauk. In the Annales des Sciences, De la Pylaie mentions three
varieties of A. esculenta—platyphylla, tæniata, and remotifolia—as occurring at Newfoundland, and in
the Flore de Terre-Neuve he makes two new species—Laminaria musæfolia, including L. esculenta,
var. platyphylla and var. remotifolia, and L. linearis, including L. esculenta var. tæniata. These species
are characterized by the different forms and position of the fructiferous leaflets, which, it must be
admitted, are so variable and so constantly pass into one another, that De la Pylaie would have done
better in retaining them all as forms of one species. Laminaria Pylaii, Bory, founded on a single
specimen brought by De la Pylaie from Newfoundland, also seems to be merely a variety of L. esculenta,
in which the lamina is cuneate at the base. At Eastport the broader forms are common, and one sees all
stages from decurrent to cuneate laminæ. Agardh refers to L. Pylaii, Bory, the Alaria esculenta var.
latifolia, of Postels and Ruprecht, whose plate represents excellently the extreme forms found at
Eastport. The present species is used as food in Scotland and Ireland, where it is called badder-locks,
henware, murlins, and also in Iceland, but it is not eaten with us.
ORDER III. OOSPOREÆ, SACHS.
Male organs (antheridia) composed of sacks borne on simple or branching filaments,
sometimes sessile, containing motile antherozoids; female organ (oogonium) in the
form of a sack, whose contents change into one or more spherical masses
(oospheres), which are directly fertilized by the antherozoids and become oospores.
In the order Conjugateæ there was a direct union of similar bodies called zoospores, and no clear
distinction of male and female cells. In the Oosporeæ the males are small-motile bodies (in algæ), which
directly impregnate the spherical masses of protoplasm, called oospheres, either before or after they
have escaped from the mother-cell, the oogonium. As a result of the impregnation, a wall of cellulose is
formed round what was before merely a mass of protoplasm, and the so-called oosphere becomes an
oospore and capable of germinating. The marine plants of the order may be divided into two suborders,
as follows:
a. Large olive-green plants, having the antheridia and oogonia in nearly closed sacks borne in a
definite part of the plant; fronds foliaceous, often provided with air-bladders FUCACEÆ.
b. Minute grass-green plants forming turfs or tufts; antheridia and oogonia naked, sessile, or
pedicellate, borne laterally on the unicellular branching frondVAUCHERIEÆ.