190 DESCRIPTION OF BALLIA. 
with the wishes of the same friends, and make them available 
to the public generally. | 
X.— Description of Barra, a new Genus of Alge. By the 
Hon. W. H. Harvey. : 
[Ta». IX] 2 
Tue interesting and singularly beautiful plant, which forms 
the subject of the present notice, was discovered in the yeat 
1803, by Robert Brown, Esq., who informs me (through our 
mutual friend, Mr N. B. Ward,) that he first found it on- 
the shores of the larger island of Kent's group in Bass’s 
Straits, where it was growing, attached to the rocks, neat low 
water mark; and that he afterwards saw it cast ashore at Port 
Dalrymple, Van Dieman’s Land. Mr Brown has also received 
it from Mr Webster, Surgeonofthe Chanticleer, who collected 
a considerable number of Alge at Staten Land and Terra del 
Fuego, where also it is supposed he procured this plant. 
Mr Brown's conjecture that Agardh’s Sphacelaria eallitricha, 
Alg. Europ. t. V1. is merely a battered and faded specimen 
of our plant, be correct, as there is much reason to suppose 
we have still another habitat; that supposed Sp E 
having been found by M. Gaudichaud (a naturalist attached 
to Freycinet,) in the sea near the Falkland Islands. + 
specimens from which our figure and description were taken, 
were gathered by the late Mrs Smith at Port Arthur, Van 
Dieman’s Land, and by Mr Ronald Gunn at Circular Headin 
the same island, and communicated to Sir W. J. Hooker 
by the latter in 1838, together with an interesting collection" 
of the marine plants of Van Dieman's Land, which 
form the subject of a future paper. 2 j 
Thus it appears that our plant has a very wide geographi- 
cal range in the Southern Ocean, extending at least over 12 
degrees of latitude, and 145 of longitude; but when we " 
. * Among the new species of this collection, is a very distinct and beauti- 
ful Champia ( C. Tasmanica,)a member of a genus hitherto supposed to be 
peculiar to the Cape of Good Hope. : : : 
