704 The Smithsonian Institution 



of the Marine Algae of North America." The memoir of Pro- 

 fessor Harvey forms the basis of our knowledge of the marine 

 flora of North America, and, although the study of algae has 

 advanced very much, the "Nereis" is still a classic work, 

 showing the skill of the author as a systematist. 



In Harvey's "Nereis" there were included but a small num- 

 ber of fresh-water algae. Professor H. C. Wood, Jr., who had 

 published in 1869 a " Prodromus of a Study of North Ameri- 

 can Fresh-water Algae " * completed a more elaborate memoir 

 on the subject, which was accepted by the Institution and 

 published in volume nineteen of the "Contributions," 1874, 

 under the title "A Contribution to the History of the Fresh- 

 water Algae of North America." The classification adopted 

 by Professor Wood was, in the main, that of Rabenhorst's 

 " Flora Europaea Algarum Aquae Dulcis et Submarinae," in 

 which the generic and specific limitations differed consider- 

 ably from those of the present day; but the work of Professor 

 Wood has special value from the large number of new and 

 interesting species, particularly the two orders Nostochineae 

 and CEdogonieae. 



Probably no work 'published by the Institution awakened 

 more interest in its day than the " Flora and Fauna within 

 Living Animals," published in 1853 in the fifth volume of the 

 " Contributions," by Professor Joseph Leidy. The subject 

 was a novel one, and the vegetable parasites described by 

 Leidy were exceedingly curious and quite perplexing. The 

 species grow attached to the mucous membrane of the cavities 

 in which they are found, and occasionally form the exterior 

 covering of worms infesting the cavities. They were con- 

 sidered by Leidy to be algoid in character, and some of them, 

 at least, appear to be related to certain genera formerly 

 placed in Nostochineae but now included in Schizomycetes. 



1 Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1871, Volume XT, page 119. 



