:■'* [ 2464 ]
C O N F E R V A dissiliens.
B r it tie-jointed Conferva.
CR YPTOGAMIA Alga.
Gen. Char. Seeds produced within the substance of
the capillary or jointed frond, or in closed tubercles
united with it.
Spec. Char. Simple, slender, straight, bright green,
brittle. Joints twice as broad as long, white-
edged, distinct and separable, with a double mass
of internal granules.
Syn. Conferva dissiliens. Dillw. Syn. 51. Conf. t. 63.
M R . BORRER finds the present species “ in pools, on Hen-
field Common, and near Twineham, Sussex, always floating loose,
in masses, mixed more or less with other Confervce ; never affixed
to reeds, &c., as Mr. Dillwyn describes it.”
This closely resembles our C. bicolor, t. 2288, under a moderate
magnifier, even in being sometimes partially colourless; but
differs altogether from it in structure, being one of those observed
by Dr. Roth to have really separate joints, whose partitions are
formed from the membrane which composes the tube itself; whilst
in bicolor, and a few other unbranched species, as well as many
of the branched ones, the thread or filament is a continued tube
containing a series of distinct vesicles. These last, of course are
not brittle at the joints.
In C. dissiliens the joints are either very short and broad, and
finally confluent in pairs; or rather, as Mr. Borrer seems to think,
the mass of green granulations contained in each joint separates,
as in C. bipartita, t. 2302. The greatest diameter of its filament
is one 700dth part of an inch. The joints being so distinctly defined,
the colouring matter can never be rounded off in any of
them, from the emptiness of its neighbour, as in bicolor. For
these remarks we are indebted to Mr. Borrer.