V ' [ 2288 ]
C O N F E R V A bicolor.
Party-coloured Conferva.
CRYPTOGAMIA Algce.
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.
Joints thrice as broad as long, white-edged, even;
several o f them together here and there empty,
white and pellucid.
^NOTWITHSTANDING all that has been done by the labours
and acuteness of Mr. Dillwyn, there are still many discoveries
probably to be made in the genus Conferva, and there
are few botanists more likely to make them, and to establish
new species on sure grounds, than Mr. W . Borrer, who found
the present plant growing on stones in a rapid streamlet at
Henfield, Sussex. Our intelligent correspondent observes that
its straight habit is exactly like C. dissiliens, Dillw. t. 63, and
the dimensions o f the joints agree with that. The great peculiarity
of our liicolor consists in an interruption of colour here
and there, seen in the fresh filaments, and by no means indicating
decay. This is the more remarkable, as each joint in
which the colouring matter terminates, is rounded off externally,
making the extremity, on either hand, of an oval spot,
formed of an assemblage of more or fewer perfectly-coloured
joints. We do not understand that the filaments are so brittle
as in the dissiliens. Mr. Sowerby found them less than a
thousandth part of an inch in diameter.