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II. — BOTANY. 



Abt. XXXVII. — The Algce of Neio Zealand: their Character- 

 istics and Distribution. 



By Robert M. Laing, B.Sc. 



[Presidential Address to the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 



7th November, 1894.] 



No paper of a general kind about our seaweeds accessible to 

 the ordinary reader has appeared since the publication of 

 Hooker's " Handbook of the New Zealand Flora " in 1864. I 

 have, therefore, thought that this would be a fitting oppor- 

 tunity to summarize some recent results, and to attempt to show 

 the chief characteristics and affinities of the species inhabiting 

 our shores. This, as you know, has already been done for our 

 flowering plants, but no endeavour has been made as yet to 

 compare our seaweeds with those of other botanical districts. 

 Of course we cannot expect the broad generalizations from 

 such a comparison that we get in the case of flowering plants, 

 but I think the results, whether negative or positive, will be 

 sufficient to justify the labour, particularly as the subject of 

 the distribution of the marine Algae has received considerable 

 attention recently. 



In Hooker's Handbook the number of species of marine 

 Algae described is 317, made up thus : Ghlorophycecs, &c, 10 ; 

 Rhodophycece, 219 ; Phceophycece, 58. After the publication 

 of this book no work was done among our seaweeds until in 

 the early seventies Dr. Berggren, of Lund University, care- 

 fully collected them in all parts of the colony. His collec- 

 tions were handed over to the great algologist, Professor J. G-. 

 Agardh, who in 1877 published an annotated list of our species 

 under the title *" De Algis Novae Zealandiae Marinis." In 

 1892 Professor Jeffery Parker, F.R.S., of Otago University, 

 sent a small collection of New Zealand Algae to Professor 

 Harvey Gibson, of Liverpool. This collection is described in 

 the " Journal of Botany," vol. xxxi., No. 366. No other work 

 of a general character has, so far as I am aware, been done 



* The specific names of this list have heen adopted throughout the 

 paper where no authority is given. 



