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 Ceramium, some species of which have spinulose branchlets, is
characterized by the tips of the forks of its terminal branchlets being
hooked inwards, and by the stems and branches being striped by alternate
hyaline and coloured bands as in the preceding genus, though the
arrangement of the colours is somewhat different. The Ceramium ciliatum,
which is a dense tuft of capillary jointed filaments, from two to six
inches long, repeatedly and regularly forked, has the tips of the last
forks so much hooked inwards, that the extremities of the branchlets
look as if they were heart-shaped. It has minute spores in globular
nuclei, sessile on the branches with two or three branch-like hairs
beneath them, and tetraspores set in the coloured parts of the joints
with a thorn between each, for in this plant the centre of the joint is
hyaline, the rest coloured.
The genus Griffithsia contains various species of bright rose-coloured
plants, which become bleached when put into freshwater, and form a
circle when spread out. Soft, tender, and gelatinous, they form dense
tufts of jointed and branched filaments on rocks at low water mark. The
filaments are slender below, capillary and forked above, and the joints
contain one linear upright rose-coloured tube, which is seen throughout
their transparent walls: a distinguished mark of the genus. Tetraspores
are borne on the hair-like jointed ramuli, and spores are amassed in
coated roundish sessile nuclei, surrounded by minute hair-like fibres.
Several species once called Griffithsia differ so much from the others,
that they are by some referred to Halurus, which has the stems and
branches thickened by overlapping whorls of tiny forked jointed and
curved ramuli. They are propagated by spores, enclosed in clusters of
nuclei borne on the tips of short branches, with a mass of curved ramuli
folding over them, and by tetraspores attached to the inside of another
set of curved ramuli. Antheridia have been discovered in several genera
of the group Ceramiaceæ, especially in Ceramium, Callithamnion,
Griffithsia, and Halurus. They consist of little clusters of cells
variously arranged, in which the active particles known as spermatozoids
are generated.
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