78 Rhodora [May 
origin, is now a pelagic perennial, of continuous active growth, forming 
abundantly vesicles, leaves and branches, but as far as observed, no 
fructification; the lower part continually decaying and wearing away. 
Whenever this decay reaches the base of a branch, or a fork of the 
main axis, we have two individuals, in a loose sense of the word, in 
place of one. All this was set forth over sixty years ago by Harvey,' 
but his clear and full statement in this work, which is the basis of 
North American phycology, has been ignored by following writers, 
who substituted their own or others’ guesses for Harvey’s personal 
observations. Bérgesen copies Harvey’s remarks in full. 
The floating species has passed under the name Sargassum bacci- 
ferum (Turner) Agardh ? although both Turner and Agardh give as a 
synonym Fucus natans Linnaeus, Sp. Pl., Vol. II, p. 1160, 1753; 
Bérgesen restores the correct form, S. natans; but as the earliest 
author he could find for this binomial was Robert Brown, Proc. Linn. 
Soc., Vol. II, p. 77, 1855, and Brown did not apply it to the present 
species, he uses the form S. natans (L.) only. M. A. Howe in a review 
of Bérgensen’s paper, Torreya, Vol. XV, p. 49, 1915, calls attention to 
the use of the binomial by J. Meyen in 1838 * which gives as the correct 
form, S. natans (L.) J. Meyen. 
Boérgesen has examined the Linnaean type, and it is the common 
narrow-leaved form of the Sargasso Sea; but among the floating vege- 
tation he finds beside this, although in less quantity, another form, 
which in the paper referred to he calls S. Hystrix J. Ag., var. fluitans 
Borgs., but in a later paper * raises to specific rank as S. fluitans Borgs. 
That the floating Sargassum must at some time have been derived 
from an attached plant is generally assumed, but apart from Bérgesen’s 
supposition that his new form was a variety of the attached and fruit- 
ing S. Hystrix, no one has published any serious attempt to determine 
the origin. 
The coast of southern New England comes within the range of 
Sargassum, an attached species, S. Filipendula Ag., being rather com- 
mon here. This is the S. vulgare of Harvey, Nereis Bor.-Am., part 1, 
1 W. H. Harvey, Nereis Boreali-Americana, part 1, p. 54, 1852. 
2 C. Agardh, Sp. Alg., Vol. I, p. 6, 1821; Fucus bacciferus Turner, Hist. Fuc., Vol. I, p. 103, 
Pl. XLVII, 1808. i 
3J. Meyen, Jahresbericht über die Resultate der Arbeiten in Felde der physiologischer 
Botanik v. d. Jahre 1837. Wiegmann’s Archiv für Naturgeschichte, Vierter Jahrgang, Zweiter 
Band, Berlin, 1838. 
_4 F. Börgesen, The marine algae of the Danish West Indies, part 2, Phaeophyceae. Dansk. 
Botanisk Arkiv, Vol. II, p. 157, 1914. 
