49 



Danish West Indian island of St. Croix, though the locaUty and 

 habitat seem inadvertently to have escaped direct mention. 

 The common "gulf -weed" of the "Sargasso Sea," Sargassum 

 natans (L.) (more commonly known as S. 'bacciferum) has been 

 discussed in detail by Borgesen in an earlier paper,* but is omitted 

 in this enumeration, presumably because it is a floating pelagic 

 form of uncertain affinities and cannot be said to occur attached 

 on the shores of the Danish West Indies. 



A peculiarity in nomenclature of a sort that will disappear as 

 soon as the idea of pinning generic and specific names down to 

 definite "types" meets with universal adoption is seen in Bor- 

 gesen 's use of the specific name variegata in both Zonaria and 

 Padina, the name in each case being derived from Lamouroux's 

 Dictyota variegata. This practice, which did not originate with 

 Borgesen, seems to rest upon the assumption that the original 

 Dictyota variegata of Lamouroux was a mixture of two species, 

 representing two genera of the same family, and that, in spite of 

 the confusion entailed, this specific name was available and valid 

 in each of these two related genera, — a practice that is possibly 

 permissible under the " Vienna Rules" but is distinctly forbidden 

 by the "American Code." In this particular case, the present 

 reviewer has enjoyed the privilege of seeing the specimens of 

 Dictyota variegata Lamour. in Lamouroux's herbarium at Caen 



* The species of Sargassum found along the coasts of the Danish West Indies 

 with remarks upon the floating forms of the Sargasso Sea. Mindeskrift for Japetus 

 Steenstrup. Copenhagen, 1914. 



Borgesen seems uncertain as to whom the combination Sargassum nalans (L.) 

 is to be credited, objecting to following Kuntze in attributing it to Robert Brown 

 (1855). Unless something earlier can be found, it seems to the reviewer that the 

 name is to be written Sargassum natans (L.) Meyen (Wiegmann, Archiv fur 

 Naturgeschichte 4^: 185. 1838). If one were to be very scrupulous in the matter, 

 a "pro parte" might be added to the citation, for Meyen evidently considered 

 that Fucus natans L. [S. bacciferum (Turn.) Ag.] and Fucus natans Turn. (5. vulgar e 

 Ag.) were not to be distinguished specifically. Miquel (Over het Sargasso of 

 Zeekroos. Tijds. Nat. Ges. en Phys. 4: 25-41. 1837) had taken the same ground 

 as to specific limitations, but had coined the new name Sargassum Columhi for the 

 combined "species," to which unnecessary specific name Meyen rightly objects. 

 That the pelagic Sargassum natans (S. bacciferum) may have been derived from 

 the attached 5. vulgare or the attached 5. Filipendula, somewhat as the loose- 

 lying var. scorpioides of Ascophyllum nodosum has been derived from the attached 

 form of that species is one of the interesting suggestions made by Borgesen in his 

 preliminary paper already referred to. 



