BOOK REVIEWS 

 Newton's A Handbook of the British Seaweeds 1 



Previously to the appearance of the attractive volume with 

 the above title late in 1931, the last professedly complete de- 

 scriptive account of the British marine algae was about sixty 

 years old and thus failed to register the modern advances in the 

 knowledge of the subject. The gap was bridged, however, by 

 papers on the algae of restricted areas and of special groups and, 

 in a more general way, by E. A. L. Batters' scholarly "A Cata- 

 logue of the British Marine Algae," published in 1902. It is 

 stated in the preface of the present handbook that "about 260 

 genera and 750 species are described." Many of the species and 

 apparently all of the genera are illustrated by excellent text- 

 figures, mostly original. 



There are full keys to the genera and species, the keys to the 

 genera being directly under the four large groups, Myxophy- 

 ceae, Chlorophyceae, Phaeophyceae, and Rhodophyceae, with- 

 out the intervention of family names, which, however, appear 

 in their proper places in the text. Kylin's segregations in the 

 Delesseriaceae are recognized but not Kuckuck's in the Chor- 

 dariaceae of Kjellman in the Engler & Prantl arrangement. 

 Perhaps Kuckuck's posthumous work appeared too late (1929) 

 for consideration. The nomenclature is, generally speaking, in 

 accordance with the "International Rules." An exception would 

 appear to be the use of Kiitzing's Phyllitis, a homonym of the 

 generic name used by Underwood, Christensen, and others for 

 the fern genus more commonly known as Scolopendrium. Peta- 

 lonia of Derbes & Sober seems to be the legal name for Kiitzing's 

 Phyllitis. The reviewer is pleased to see the original spelling 

 Elachistea in place of "Elackista" of Engler & Prantl and De- 

 Toni. He would have been equally pleased to see the original 

 spelling Lithothamniiim , now adopted by Mme. Lemoine and 

 others, in place of the perhaps more familiar "Lithothamnion.'" 

 It is of interest to note the suppression of Actinococcus Kiitz. 

 and Sterrocolax Schmitz, currently considered to be parasites 



1 Newton, Lily. A Handbook of the British Seaweeds. 8 vo. pp. i-xiii, 

 1-478./. 1-270. 1931. The Trustees of the British Museum (Natural History), 

 Cromwell Road, S. W. 7, London. 15 shillings. 



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