THE M.VIUNR ALG.E OF NEW ENGLAND, 



By Prof. W. G. Farlow. 



IXTRODUCTION. 



This report is iiitoiuled, with the exception of the Diatomes, to 

 iuclude all the marine species at present known to occur on the 

 coast of the United States from Xew Jersey to Eastport, Me., and 

 a few species are mentioned which, althongh they have not yet been 

 found within our limits, are nevertheless to be expected from the 

 fact that they occur on the neighborinfj coast of the British provinces. 

 In preparing" the report I have attempted to present, in a compact and 

 more or less popular form, a description of the ditferent orders and species 

 of sea-weeds, so that persons who frequent the coast of New England, 

 and especially those in the service of the Fish Commission, may have 

 at hand the means of determining the forms found in our waters. The 

 descriptive portion of the report is preceded by a short account of the 

 general structure and classification of sea-weeds, which is necessary in 

 the present case, because there is no generally accessible book in the 

 English language which gives a good account of the modern views of 

 the classification and structure of alga?. 



The list of papers relating directly to New England alga? is very 

 meager. In January, 1S47, Prof. J. W. Bailey published in the Ameri- 

 can Journal of Arts and Sciences a paper entitled Xotes on the AJgfv of 

 the United States. lie enumerates 50 sx)ecies found in Xew England, 

 but some of the number are apparently' erroneously credited to our 

 coast. Two continuations of the article appeared in May, 1847, and 

 July, 1S48, in the former of which 19, and in the latter 17, species new 

 to New England are enumerated. In 1847 ]Mr. S. T. Olney, in 

 the Proceedings of the Providence Franklin Society, published a 

 paper on Rhode Island Plants^ in which he mentions 4r) species 

 of algic. Most of the species in the papers above mentioned had 

 been submitted to Prof. W. U. Harvey, of Dublin. The classic work 

 of Harvey, the Nereis Boreali- Americana^ of which the lirst two parts 

 were published in the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge in 1852, 

 and the third part in 1857, is the only elaborate account ever published 

 with regard to the sea- weeds of the United States, and it has always been 

 the standard autliority on the subject. Since the appearance of I larvey's 

 great work comparatively little has been added to our knowledge of the 

 sea-weeds of Xew Enghuid. In the Keport of the United States Fish 



