THE 



ESSEX NATURALIST 



BEING THE 



Journal of tbe lEseey f iclb Club 



FOR 1894. 



A PROVISIONAL LIST OF THE MARINE ALG/E 

 OF ESSEX, AND THE ADJACENT COAST. 



By E. A L. RATTERS, B.A., LL.B., F.L.S. 



'TpHE low flat sea board of the county of Essex, deeply indented by 

 ■^ shallow creeks, and extending for a distance of close on one 

 ^ hundred miles,^ is fringed with desolate expanses of mud, alternating 

 with stretches of shifting sand or loose shingle, where few, if any, 

 natural rocks capable of affording a stable anchorage for Algce are to 

 be seen, even at the times of lowest tides. Few sea-weeds, and these 

 of the commoner kmds, were all that could be expected to grow on 

 such a coast, and consequently botanists have bestowed little or no 

 attention on the Marine Algje of the county. As was to be expected, 

 therefore, the sources from which a list of the Marine Algre of 

 Essex could be compiled are " few and far between." The Rev. 

 John Ray, in his "Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum," 1690, 

 mentions a few Essex Algre, but it is not always easy to recognise 

 from Ray's names the plants he intended to describe, and in many 

 cases it was only by an examination of the collection of plants 

 ("Herb. Sloane," vol. cxiv., in Brit. Mus.), made by Ray's contem. 

 porary, the Rev. Adam Buddie, and which had been named from the 

 third edition of the "Synopsis," that I was able to identify some of 

 the species. A few — very few — Essex localities in Greville's " Algce 

 Britannicse," Harvey's " Phycologia Britannica," and Grattann's 



I As the crow flies the distance is hardly more than forty miles, but by foUouiiit; the indenta- 

 lioas of the coast this is considerably more thaii doubled. 



