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Diatomoloo^ as an Bib to (Bcoloo^- 



By M. J. Tempere.* 



WHO would maintain at the present time that the study of 

 Diatoms is of small importance, and not recognise that 

 as much and even more than any branch of Cryptogamia 

 it has a right to be classed among those which can powerfully aid 

 the researches into the secrets of Nature that are the most difficult 

 of solution ? 



Diatomology exists. It is a science which nevertheless has 

 not received the unanimous sanction of learned men, for in the 

 best treatises on Botany there is scarcely any mention of Diatoms 

 and of their importance in Nature. 



The study of Algae in general, of Mosses, Fungi, and of 

 Lichens, is honoured everywhere. There is not a university, a 

 faculty, or a large school, that does not reckon among its savants 

 those who occupy themselves with the different branches of cryp- 

 togamic botany ; but of Diatoms, none ! — at least in France, for 

 among foreigners I could mention many, among whom are two of 

 our collaborators. 



The reasons that I have heard given as an excuse for this 

 neglect appears to me so ill-founded that they are hardly worth 

 noticing ; some of them even appear to me to be only the expres- 

 sion of one who will not discuss the question. 



In our last number I mentioned the observation made by 

 Prof P. T. Cleve, of Upsala, on the identity of the species found 

 on the coast of Greenland and on the north of Asia, giving rise 

 to the idea of a current between the two opposite points, and thus 

 aiding the solution of a hydrographical problem 



To-day, by the reading of a brochure having the title, Prelimi- 

 nary Report on the Physical Geography of the Littorina Sea, by 

 Henry Munthe (a work published in the Bulletin of the Geological 

 Society of Upsala, No. 3, Vol. 11., 1894), I have seen with pleasure 

 that at length a geological savant, not content to borrow from 

 Paleontology for proofs in aid of his deductions, relating to the 

 successive changes to which the Baltic Sea has been subjected, 



* Le Diatoiniste, li., 1894, pp. 129 — 130. 



