VI ADVERTISEMENT. 



study of Natural History in general. The student who com- 

 mences with one branch, when he has in some degree mastered 

 it, is led on to another ; and thus one who begins by picking up 

 a few shells or seaweeds on occasional visits to the shore, often 

 ends in becoming an expert naturalist. The Author is gratified 

 by knowing that his 'Phycologia Britannica' has obtained 

 a considerable circulation among amateur collectors of marine 

 plants, and, he trusts, has been useful in leading many persons 

 to observe and study some of the most beautiful and delicate of 

 Nature's vegetable productions. In now commencing a ' Phy- 

 cologia Australica,' though he cannot look for so large an 

 audience, at least at the outset, yet he hopes this work may win 

 some favour from the Colonial public, for whose use it is more 

 especially designed. Great cities are springing up in the Aus- 

 tralian Colonies ; and watering-places, to which the citizen takes 

 his family to enjoy the sea-breeze during the summer-time, are 

 coining into being. English tastes and habits are reproduced at 

 the antipodes ; and among these a love of Natural History may 

 be prominently reckoned. Our fellow-countrymen, wherever 

 they go, bring or send home specimens of natural objects, and 

 there is, perhaps, no country where collections of botanical and 

 zoological specimens are more widely dispersed than in England 

 among the population. Already in Australia there are many 

 intelligent collectors of Algae, and all that seems wanting to 

 induce many more to pursue this pleasing branch of botany, 

 is some book, in which they will find an intelligible account of 

 these plants, and of their classification. The Author's ' Nereis 

 Australis' was too exclusively addressed to expert botanists 

 already familiar with the technical language of the science, and 

 even if completed on its original plan, would not serve as a 

 guide to amateur collectors. 



The present work, it is hoped, will serve the purpose both 

 of the expert botanist and of the amateur. The former will 

 find a technical description of each plant ; and the latter will 

 have presented to his or her eye a coloured drawing, accom- 



