PACIFIC MARINE ALGAE OF THE ALLAN HANCOCK 

 EXPEDITIONS TO THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS 



William Randolph Taylor 



INTRODUCTION 



The Pacific territory traversed by the 1934 and 1939 Hancock Expe- 

 ditions was thoroughly familiar to Captain Hancock and some of his 

 crew and scientists by virtue of frequent previous visits. As these had not 

 involved a marine botanist, it was a new field in this respect, and this is 

 the first general Hancock Pacific Expedition report of the marine plants 

 of the region. For this reason it is appropriate to go into some detail re- 

 garding the history of algal study in the area, the actual operations, the 

 aspect of the places visited, their main marine plant characteristics, and 

 the general floristic relationships of this territory. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW 



Hooker (1851) and Howell (1941b) mention the brief visit to the 

 Galapagos Is. of a notable collector, Hugh Cuming, in 1809; he was 

 followed by Douglas, Scouler, MacRae, Darwin, Du Petit Thouars, and 

 Edmonstone (Hooker 1851). Since this early period, visitors have been 

 more frequent, and collections of vascular plants of a considerable degree 

 of completeness are available in England and more particularly in Amer- 

 ica, though the lower cryptogams have fared poorly in these field activi- 

 ties. Of the more recent explorations only enough notice can be given to 

 enable interested parties to obtain access, through their published results, 

 to the quite considerable botanical literature now accumulated. We may 

 mention a few, partly because they collected algae, partly for the impor- 

 tance of their other botanical observations. Algal records practically begin 

 with the papers of Piccone (1886, 1889) on the collections of the Vettor 

 Pisani Expedition, though Galapagos algal records are few. The United 

 States Coast Survey vessel Hassler secured a few algae in 1872 (Pourtales 

 1875), and the United States Bureau of Fisheries vessel Albatross rather 

 fewer in 1888, but these while identified in part were not directly pub- 

 lished upon (Taylor 1930, p. 627). 



The next considerable collections were those of Snodgrass and Heller, 

 who secured the plants for the Hopkins-Stanford Expedition (Robinson 



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