OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 351 



XI. 



LIST OF THE MARINE ALG^ OF THE UNITED 



STATES. 



WITH NOTES OF NEW AND IMPERFECTLY KNOWN SPECIES. 



By W. G. Farlow. 



Presented, March 9, 1875. 



Since the publication, in 1857, of the third part of the Nereis Am.- 

 Bor., by Prof. W. II. Harvey, the contributions to our knowledge of 

 North American algne have not been numerous. Prof. J. G. Agardh, 

 of Lund, and Dr. F. J. Puprecht, of St. Petersburg, are almost the 

 only persons who have described new species found on our shores. 

 That so few novelties have been described by American botanists, is to 

 be attributed to the fact that the eastern coast, where the greater num- 

 ber of our botanists reside, has a very limited flora. From Eastport, 

 Me., to Boston, the flora is arctic in character ; an^ as usual in such 

 cases, the number of species is small in comparison with the number 

 of individuals. Of the habits of the winter and spring species of this 

 portion of the coast we know very little, since the severity of the cli- 

 mate renders frequent visits to the shore at those seasons difficult, if 

 not dangerous. The marine vegetation from Nantucket to New York 

 has been better studied than that of any other portion of our coast. By 

 the opportunities for dredging offered by the United States Fish Com- 

 mission, under Prof. Baird, it has been found that some of the plants, as 

 Euthora cristata, Ag., which were supposed to be peculiar to northern 

 New England, occur in the deeper and cooler water south of Cape 

 Cod. Although some localities, as Wood's Hole, are comparatively 

 rich in species, it must be confessed that north of Key West there are 

 no places to be compared, as far as the richness of the marine flora is 

 concerned, with the coast of Devonshire in England, or that of France 

 from Calvados to Finisterre. On the coast from New York northward 

 we are not to expect many additions, except of the smaller species of 

 Ectocarpus, Lyngbya, «S:c. The reprehensible practice of our algolo- 

 gists, of collecting and drying large numbers of specimens, rather than 



