THE CLASSES OF ALG.E. - 05 



of the colossal forests of Sargasso in the Atlantic ocean, those 

 immense banks of Algae, covering a space of about 40,000 

 square miles — the same which made Columbus, on his voyage 

 of discovery, believe that a continent was near. Similar but 

 far more extensive forests of Algae grew in the primaeval 

 ocean, probably in dense masses, and what countless genera- 

 tions of these archilithic Algte have died out one after 

 another is attested, among other facts, by the vast thickness 

 of Silurian alum schists in Sweden, the peculiar composition 

 of which proceeds from those masses of submarine Algtf . 

 According to the recently expressed opinion of Frederick 

 Mohr, a geologist of Bonn, even the greater part of our coal 

 seams have arisen out of the accumulated dead bodies of the 

 Algas forests of the ocean. 



Within the branch of the Algae we distinguish four 

 different classes, each of which is again divided into several 

 orders and families. These again contain a large number of 

 different genera and species. We designate these four 

 classes as Primaeval Algae, or Archephyceae, Green Algae, or 

 Chlorophyceae, Brown Algae, or Phaeophyceae, and Red Alga?, 

 or Rhodophyceae. 



The first class of Algae, the Prinioival Algae (Archephycea?), 

 might also be called prinKjeval plants, because they contain 

 the simplest and must imperfect of all plants, and, among 

 them, those most ancient of all vegetable organisms out of 

 which all other plants have originated. To them therefore 

 belong those most ancient of all vegetable Monera which 

 arose by spontaneous generation in the beginning of tlae 

 Laurentian period. Furtlier, we have to reckon among them 

 all those vegetable forms of the simplest organization which 

 first developed out of the Monera in the Laurentian period, 



