MARINE ALGÆ 



F. BØRGESEN. 



Intro du etion. The earliest contribution to our knowledge ol' the 

 Marine Vegetation of the Færoes was made, so far as I know, by 

 Jørgen Landt, who in his book »Forsøg til en Beskrivelse over 

 Færøerne«, Kjøbenhavn 1800, mentions about 30 species of which 

 some are easily recognizable, though others of the species which 

 he reports from the Færdes, e. g. Fuciis serratus and Conferva coral- 

 liiut, must imdonbtedly be due to some error as they have not been 

 found since; whilst with regard to others again, it is impossible to 

 ascertain with any certainty what is meant. 



The next and in every way most important contribution which 

 has hitherto been published was that of the Rev. Hans Christian 

 Lyngbye who visited the Færoes in the year 1817 with the sup- 

 port of the Danish Government. The results of this journey are 

 embodied in his famous work »Tentamen Hydrophytologiæ Danicæ«, 

 published in 1819. In this work, in which Lyngbye describes 

 several new genera and species on the strength of the material col- 

 lected in the Færoes, some 100 Færoese species and varieties are 

 enumerated. In the case of several of these species the narae given 

 by Lyngbye has been retained up to the present time, while others 

 have been re-named. And, more particulaiiy with regard to these 

 latter, the faet that Lyngbye's Herbarium is pivserved in the Bo- 

 tanical Museum in Copenhagen, has been of great importance to 

 me, as I have constantly been able to consult the specimens to which 

 he refers in Hydrophytologia and to revise his old determinations. 

 While the determinations of the greater part of the species were, 

 on the whole, easy enough to revise, there were some which caused 

 difficulty owing partly to the material of the species contained in 

 Lyngbye's Herbarium being old and decayed, and partly and more 



Botany of the Færdes. 22 



