DIATOMACEAE. For the knowledge we possess of these beautiful plants, so minute as to be undiscernible by our unaided vision, we are indebted to the assistance of the microscope. It was not till towards the close of the 18th century that the first known forms of this group were discovered by O. F. Muller. And so slow was the process of discovery in this field of scientific research that in the course of half a century, when Agardh published his Systema algarum in 1824, only forty-nine species included under eight genera had been described. Since that time, however, with modern microscopes and microscopic methods, eminent botanists in all parts of the civilized world have studied these minute plants, with the result that the number of known genera and species has been greatly increased. Over 10,000 species of diatoms have been described, and about 1200 species and numerous varieties occur in the fresh waters and on the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland. Rabenhorst, in the index to his Flora Europaea algarum (1864) enumerated about 4000 forms which had up to that time been discovered throughout the continent of Europe.
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| Fig. 1. | |
| A and B, Melosira arenaria. | C-E, Melosira varians. |
| E, showing formation of auxospore. | |
| Fig. 2. |
The diatoms are more commonly known among systematic botanists as the Bacillarieae, particularly on the continent of Europe, and although such an immense number of very diverse forms are included in it, the group as a whole exhibits a remarkable uniformity of structure. The Bacillarieae is one of the large groups of Algae, placed by some in close proximity to the Conjugatae and by others as an order of the Brown Algae (or Phaeophyceae), but their characters are so distinctive and their structure is so uniform as to warrant the separation of the diatoms as a distinct class. The affinities of the group are doubtful.
| Fig. 3.—Podosphenia Lyngbyii. |
| Fig. 4.—Pleurosigma balticum. |
The diatoms exhibit great variety of form. While some species are circular and more or less disk-shaped, others are oval in outline. Some are linear, as Synedra Ulna (fig. 2), others more or less crescentic; others again are cuneate, as Podosphenia Lyngbyii (fig. 3); some few have a sigmoid outline, as Pleurosigma balticum (fig. 4); but the prevailing forms are naviculoid, as in the large family Naviculaceae, of which the genus Navicula embraces upwards of 1000 species. They vary also in their modes of growth,—some being free-floating, others attached to foreign bodies by simple or branched gelatinous stalks, which in some species are short and thick, while in others they are long and slender. In some genera the forms are simple, while in others the frustules are connected together in ribbon-like filaments, or form, as in other cases, zigzag chains. In some genera the individuals are naked, while in many others they are enclosed in a more or less definite gelatinous investment. The conditions necessary to their growth are moisture and light. Wherever these circumstances coexist, diatomaceous forms will almost invariably be found. They occur mixed with other organisms on the surface of moist rocks; in streamlets and pools, they form a brownish stratum on the surface of the mud, or cover the stems and leaves of water plants or floating twigs with a furry investment. Marine forms are usually attached to various sea-weeds, and many are found in the stomachs of molluscs, holothurians, ascidians and other denizens of the ocean. The fresh-water forms are specifically distinct from those incidental to salt or brackish water,—fresh-water species, however, are sometimes carried some distance into the sea by the force of the current, and in tidal rivers marine forms are carried up by the force of the tide. Some notion may be formed of the extreme minuteness of these forms from the fact that one the length of which is 1⁄200th of an inch may be considered as beyond the medium size. Some few, indeed, are much larger, but by far the greater proportion are of very much smaller dimensions.
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| Fig. 5. | |
| A-C, Tetracyclus lacustris. | D and E, Tabellaria fenestrata. |
| F and G, Tabellaria flocculosa. | |
Diatoms are unicellular plants distinguished from kindred forms by the fact of having their soft vegetative part covered by a siliceous case. Each individual is known as a frustule, and the cell-wall consists of two similar valves nearly parallel to each other, each valve being furnished with a rim (or connecting-band) projecting from it at a right angle.
One of these valves with its rim is slightly smaller than the other, the smaller fitting into the larger pretty much as a pill-box fits into its cover. This peculiarity of structure affords ample scope for the growth of the protoplasmic cell-contents, for as the latter increase in volume the siliceous valves are pushed out, and their corresponding siliceous rims become broader. The connecting-bands although closely fitting their respective valves are distinct from them, and together the two bands form the girdle.
An individual diatom is usually described from two aspects, one in which the surface of the valve is exposed to view—the valve view, and one in which the girdle side is exposed—the girdle view. The valves are thin and transparent, convex on the outside, and generally ornamented with a variety of sculptured markings. These sculptures often present the aspect of striae across the face of the valve, and the best lenses have shown them to consist of a series of small cavities within the siliceous wall of the cell. The valves of some of the marine genera exhibit a beautiful areolated structure due to the presence of larger chambers within the siliceous cell-wall. Many diatoms possess thickenings of the cell-wall, visible in the valve view, in the centre of the valve and at each extremity. These thickenings are known as the nodules, and they are generally connected by a long median line, the raphe, which is a cleft in the siliceous valve, extending at least some part of its length.