R Hevision of the genas Gonstantinea 



By WILLIAM ALBERT SETCHELL. 



In 1 7Ó8 Samuel Gottlicb Gmelin published in bis liistoria Fu- 



corum (p. 102, pi. V, ff. 2 and 2*), an account and appended some i 



fairly characteristic figures of a seaweed from the neighborhood of 1 



Cape Lopatka at the southern end of the peninsular of Kamtschatka, i 



to which he gave the name Fucus rosa marina. As Gmelin indicates '1 

 in bis description and notes, tbis plant was of a decidedly different 

 type from that of any known alga and it remains to tbis day of so 



peculiar a habit that it readily stands for a generic type well isolated | 



from its nearest relatives, For the next seventy years practically : 



notbing farther was learned concerning tbis plant and it carne to be i 



regarded as almost fabulous. C. Agardh places it among the « spe- : 



cies inquirendas», both in bis Species Algarum (1822, p. 190) and 1 



in bis Systema Algarum (1824. p. 253), wbile neither Turner nor ' 



EspER mention it, and it has no place in the Synopsis given in Gre- ; 



ville' s Algse Britannicae (i83o, pp. XXIX et seq.). Curiously enough, j 



also, Mertens, who certainly collected the next plants to be made | 

 known to the world, does not mention it in the letters written to 

 bis father and published in Linnaca in 1829. These specimcns, bo- 



wever, collected in the vicinity of Petropavloski, and consequently j 



not far from the type locality, werc used by Postels and Ruprecht ; 

 in the account and figures given in thcir lUustrationes Algarum 

 (1840, p. 17, pi. XXX and XL, ff. 84, 85). They made the Fiiciis 



rosa iiiariìia Gmelin the type of a new genus which they named j 



Constantinea and in which they included also two other species, viz. ' 



C. Siichensìs of the Alaskan coast and C. reiiìforinis oi\hQ Mediter- 1 



