ALG^E. 



STUDENTS of phycology hope so much from the suc- 

 cessive parts of Engler and Prantl's Pflanzenfamilien 

 that its progress is watched only less critically than the 

 necessary Sylloge of De Toni. After the depression pro- 

 duced by Wille's uncritical and often inaccurate treatment 

 of the Chlorophycece, Kjellman's excellent account (i) of 

 the olive and brown Algae has been very welcome. He has 

 set about his work in a very exhaustive fashion on the whole, 

 and has skilfully assembled his orders and their genera with 

 the experienced eye and judgment of one who knows most 

 of them at first hand, and he has above all furnished an 

 abundance of clear illustrations. It is very gratifying to 

 observe that the more obscure the group, the more anxiously 

 accurate is its treatment. It is difficult to refrain from ap- 

 parently exaggerated words of praise of all this excellence, 

 and one says this the more readily that there is a complaint 

 of some gravity to be made. Dr. Kjellman has, doubtless 

 unconsciously, ignored much of our native work at these 

 orders done during recent years, and the result is not only 

 casual imperfections, but, at all events, one omission of an 

 ordinal type. He retains Splachnidium among the Fucacece, 

 though nearly two years have elapsed since its removal to 

 an order of its own for reasons of undisputed validity, of 

 which he does not appear to have heard. There is similar 

 ignorance of other papers by other writers, in other journals, 

 all British, and I am not complaining of mere trivialities, but 

 of a neglect of British work which is not confined by any 

 means to Dr. Kjellman, or to this subject. It is far too 

 prevalent among continental botanists, and contrasts pain- 

 fully with the exaggerated respect frequently paid to their 

 opinions among ourselves. I should like to point to the 

 excellent figures of Fucacece and Laminariacece and of genera 

 especially that are known in this country only to students in 

 our great herbaria. In this and in his treatment of the 

 boreal forms which Dr. Kjellman knows so well from his 



