298 Transactions. — Botany. 



on our seaweeds since they were described by Harvey in the 

 " Flora Novae Zealandiae." 



Agardh's list is not quite complete, as it takes no note of 

 Corallines, of which twelve are recorded in the Handbook. 

 The total number of species included in it is only 277, or 

 forty less than those given by Hooker. On the other hand, 

 forty-four of the species included are new to our Islands; and, 

 of these, thirty-nine are new to science, and consequently are, 

 as far as we know, endemic ; and three others — Ceramium nodi- 

 ferum, Gigartina laciniata, and Gracilaria flagellifera — are 

 only known from the Chathams, which appear to be richer 

 than much of the neighbouring mainland in species. The 

 two lists therefore include about 233 species in common. 

 Agardh's list, on adding to it the Corallines of Harvey and 

 Hooker, excludes about seventy-two of the species described 

 in the Handbook. It is difficult to be positive about the 

 exact number, as sometimes one species in one list will corre- 

 spond in part to two or three in the other. Again, there 

 must be added to Agardh's list two species — viz., Ceramium 

 sticliidiosum, A spaing op sis armata — omitted from it probably 

 by an oversight, as they are admitted by him into our flora 

 elsewhere." However, after making these additions, the dis- 

 crepancies between the two lists still remain rather large. 

 Perhaps it would be well here to remind you of the following 

 passage from Hooker's preface to the Algae in the Handbook :+ 

 " To my late friend Dr. Harvey I am indebted for the deter- 

 mination and description of the New Zealand Algae in my 

 Flora of these islands. His widely and deeply deplored death 

 during the present year has deprived me and this work of the 

 benefits of his revisal of the following compilation." 



It is quite possible that had Dr. Harvey lived some of the 

 discrepancies between the lists referred to above would have 

 disappeared — some of the species incorrectly included in the 

 Handbook would probably have been excluded. Thus, for 

 example, the well-known Sargassum bacciferum, or gulf-weed, 

 appears in it on the authority of D'Urville, Lesson, and Sin- 

 clair. Its appearance is possibly due to the imperfect descrip- 

 tion of imperfect specimens. \Turbinaria, Phyllospora, and 

 Scaberia, on the other hand, may have crept in on account of 

 their occurrence in Australia. Early writers were not always 

 careful to distinguish between Australia and x\ustralasia. 

 None of these genera have been found by any recent collector 

 in New Zealand, and, as the species are all large and con- 

 spicuous, they would certainly have been obtained recently, 



* " Epicrisis Systematis Algarum," p. 106 and p. 666. 

 \ " Handbook of the New Zealand Flora," p. 639. 

 I Vide " Systematic and Structural Account of the Genus Turbi- 

 naria," by Miss E. S. Barton : Trans. Linn. Soc., Oct., 1891. 



