On Molecular and Microscopic Science, Volume 1 (of 2)Somerville, Mary
History
On Molecular and Microscopic Science, Volume 1 (of 2)
Somerville, Mary
Matter -- Constitution; Microscopy; Natural history
The genus Hormotrichum, which forms tufts several inches long, of bright
grass green, differs from the Confervas in being soft and gelatinous,
and even more by its mode of increase, which, however, is still by
zoospores. The H. collabens may be taken as the type of this genus. It
forms a long and large tuft of soft gelatinous and slippery filaments of
glossy green. The joints of the filaments are once, or once and a half,
longer than they are broad, and the green granular matter within them is
collected into a round sac or sporidium in the centre of each, and after
being converted into zoospores, the sac comes through a rupture in the
joint into the water, opens, and sets the zoospores free.
The genus Cladophora, which has twenty-five species in the British seas
alone, forms tufts of jointed filaments from four to eight, ten, or even
twenty inches high. In some species the filaments are rigid, bristly,
and wiry; in others they are soft and silky; but they are always richly,
variously, and sometimes densely, branched and rebranched. In some the
branches and branchlets are forked, in others tripartite; the Cladophora
pellucida, which is a rigid, wiry plant, combines both these forms.
The genus Bangia consists of purple filamentous jointed and unbranched
Algæ, which are distinguished from all others by the microscopic
arrangement of their endochrome, which is enclosed in little cells
placed according to a definite plan within the transparent and tubular
joints of the filaments. In the Bangia fuscopurpurea, whose blackish
purple tufts, several inches long, cling closely to the rocks near
high-water mark, the tubular joints contain rows of minute colour cells
radiating from a centre. In the narrow filaments there is but one colour
cell in a joint, but in the broader filaments there are from three to
five, forming a tesselated line across it. In this plant one spore is
produced in each joint. The Bangia ciliaris forms a scarcely perceptible
rosy pink fringe of hair-like jointed filaments on the Zostera marina,
and also on other Algæ. The filaments are not more than the tenth or
fifth of an inch long, consequently their joints are most minute, yet
the microscope shows that they contain from two to three colour cells
set as if radiating from a centre, and that the granular endochrome in
each cell is converted into two zoospores. The Bangia ceramicola, which
forms purplish pink tufts on small Algæ in rock pools, differs from both
of the preceding. The joints of its filaments are once or twice as long
as they are broad, and contain colour cells like long upright lines. By
aided vision zoospores are seen to be formed within the linear colour
cells, then the cells run together into a globular mass, which bursts
through the cell wall, leaving the joint empty. The whole genus is soft
and sometimes gelatinous.
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