CHAPTER III 

 THE STUDY OF THE CRYPTOGAMS 



IT is necessary to give a resume of the progress of know- 

 ledge and research among this group, but here again space 

 forbids more than a sketch. Each year saw an output of 

 memoirs which became increasingly numerous as the end 

 of the century was approached. Naturally they were very 

 unequal in merit, many of them of scarcely more than 

 transitory interest. The chief works on the Algae that 

 appeared may be classed into those which treated of 

 taxonomy and of life-histories, and of those which were 

 more particularly anatomical. Work on all these lines was 

 only the continuation of what had been already in course of 

 publication in earlier years. In the field of taxonomy 

 mention may be made of the continuation of Agardh's 

 Species, genera, et or dines Algarum, commenced by him in 

 1848, which was only completed at the end of the century; 

 Reinke's Atlas deutscher Meeresalgen, commenced in 1889 ; 

 Falkenberg's Die Algen im weitesten Sinne, in Schenk's 

 Handbuch of 1882, and De Toni's Sylloge Algarum, running 

 from 1889. Special floras were Harvey's Phycologia 

 australica (1858-63), Farlow's Marine Algae of New Eng- 

 land (1881), Kjellman's Algae of the Arctic Sea (1883), 

 and Hauck's Meeresalgen in Rabenhorst's Kryptogamen- 

 flora (1885). 



The principal researches dealing with the life-history 

 of various forms were Areschoug's Observationes phycologicae 

 (1866-75), Agardh's Till Algernes Systematik (1872-99), 

 Bornet and Thuret's Notes algologiques (1876-80) and their 

 Etudes phycologiques (1878), and later Kuckuck's Beitrage 

 zuv Kenntniss der Meeresalgen (1897-9). 



