I. 



ON SPLACHNIDIUM RUGOSUM, GREV., THE 

 TYPE OF A NEW ORDER OF ALGsE. 



HISTORICAL. The earliest record of the subject of this research is the 

 description by Linnseus* of Ufoa rugosa, a plant collected at the Cape of 

 Good Hope by Koenig. His description was based on two specimens 

 preserved in his herbarium, one of them of mature stature, the other con- 

 siderably younger. Dawson Turner f describes and figures it under the 

 name of Fucus rugosus, and his illustration was drawn from the mature 

 specimen in the Linnean herbarium, of which it is a good representation. 

 He mentions that this plant had been collected in New Holland by Robert 

 Brown, who obtained it also at the Cape of Good Hope, as found on con- 

 sulting his herbarium in the British Museum. The next noteworthy record 

 is that by Suhr+, who, describing a specimen collected by Drege, assigned 

 it a place in the genus Dumontia, to which the dried specimens have a 

 certain outward resemblance. Greville next founded the genus Splack- 

 nidium for its reception, and it remains still the only representative of this 

 generic type. In the meantime the plant had been collected by Lesson || 

 in New Zealand, and a short description and figures are given by Kiitzing 

 in Tabula Phycologica*^ Harvey gives details of its distribution, and 

 describes it in his Genera of South African Plants (p. 394), and in the 

 Flora of New Zealand (vol. ii., part ii., p. 215), and figures it on plate XIV. 

 of his Phycologia Australica. Lastly, we must note a paper by Mr. R. M. 



* Mantissa, p. 311, and Syst. Nat. Ed. Gene/. //., p. 1391. 



t Fuci, vol. iii., p. 118, tab. 185. 



\ Beitrage zur Algenkunde in Flora, 1840, p. 275. 



Synopsis, p. xxxvi. 



|| Voyage d 'Astrolabe. Serf. Astrolab., p. 140. 



IT Vol. x., p. 4. 



A 



