Page:The Journal of Indian Botany, Volume III.djvu/118

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The genus Aneura is a very large one. Stephani describes 264 species in his Species hepaticarum (7). The genus is moreover very widely distributed in the whole world. Aneura indica is one of the few Indian species and was described by one of the writers of the present paper in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society (3). It is an extremely variable species in the shape and structure of the thallus and especially in the form of the upper epidermal cells. Although the life history of the genus is fairly well known from the investigations of some foreign species no Indian species has so far been investigated. In view of this fact and also on account of the extreme variability of Aneura indica it was thought likely that some interesting points might be found in this species and therefore the life history has been studied as far as possible.

The material was collected by Prof. Kashyap from various parts in the Western Himalayas during several years, and although the plants were preserved only in rectified spirit the preservation in many cases was exceptionally good, so that mitotic figures were clearly seen and the chromosomes could be counted more or less accurately in the thallus, the young antheridium, the seta and the young capsule. It may be stated as a result of these observations that there are : twelve chromosomes in the sporophyte and six in the gametophyte. Olapp (2) has investigated Aneura pinguis very fully but she does not give the number of chromosomes in that species and so far as the writers know the number is not known in any other species of the genus also.

The capsule of Aneura indica has not been described up to this time. A very good spirit specimen kindly sent by Rai Bahadur K. Rangachari had a ripe capsule and the observations given here in that connection were made from that specimen. Our thanks are due to him for the material.

The thallus varies in thickness in the middle from eight cells (in plants occurring in the hills in moist and shady places) to