THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
Vo. XXII. AUGUST, 1888. No. 260 
OUR FRESH-WATER ALGZ.! 
BY EDWARD S. BURGESS. 
‘WHat do you mean by the Fresh-water Alge? and what 
interest do you find in them? are the questions I find asked 
me. Go with me to the coast, if you would learn my answer. 
Notice the sea-weed growing along the shore; see the dark olives 
and browns shown in the rockweed, left dripping and slippery 
by the retiring tide; note the waving tufts of green laver and sheets 
of membrane-like sea-lettuce floating near the tide-mark, and watch 
the beautiful red mossy cushions of delicate growth washed in by 
the breaking wave. Ask of almost any dweller on the coast and he 
will say, “ People nowadays call them alge.” The longer you 
watch them the more attracted by their beauty you will become ; 
Soon you will begin to collect and mount them like other visitors 
to the shore. At first the most beautiful only will be collected ; 
then others that are less so, “simply for the variety,” ag you may 
apologize to yourself; finally you will end by determining to keep 
a specimen of every kind, whether beautiful or not. And now you 
approach the stand-point of science, for science sees interest in every 
representative of a race, whether that race be high or low; and 
finds in every plant a right to our regard in the fact of its inheri- 
tance of the mystery of life. 
But every summer must have its end, and so there will come the 
time of packing up the glowing specimens with their endless shades 
‘Condensed from a lecture delivered at the United States National 
Museum, Washington, D. C., January 7, 1888. 
