346 
REVIEWS. 
AMERICAN SEAWEEDS.* 
T HIS Report is an attempt to present in a compact and more or less popu- 
lar form a description of the different orders and species of seaweeds 
known to occur on the coast of the United States from Eastport (Maine) to 
New Jersey. 
Since the publication of Harvey’s classical Nereis Boreali- Americana, in 
the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge between 1852 and 1857, com- 
paratively little has been added to our knowledge of the seaweeds of New 
England, the species recently discovered, with the exception of Nemastoma 
Bairdii, being mostly insignificant in size. 
But during the last twenty years the great advance that has been made 
in the knowledge of the fructification and mode of growth of marine algae, 
due to the researches of Thuret, Bornet, Areschoug and others, has entirely 
altered the bases of classification, and no book giving a good account of the 
modern views of the systematic arrangement and structure of algae has, 
until now, been published in the English language. 
The chapter devoted in the Report to this branch of the subject gives, in 
the short space of ten pages, a resume , unequalled for clearness and masterly 
treatment, of the present views of the distinctive features of the different 
groups. 
The classification is very similar to that published by Le Jolis in his 
Liste des Algues Marines de Cherbourg , but the Vaucheriae, together with the 
Fucaceae, are placed under the Oosporeae, and the Bryopsideae are raised to 
the rank of a sub-order, while the various families of the Florideae are all 
described as sub-orders. 
The introductory part contains much information concerning the geogra- 
phical distribution of Algae in North America, which cannot fail to be of 
interest to European algologists. Thus, the marine vegetation above Cape 
Cod is shown to be of a strongly marked arctic character, being a direct 
continuation of the flora of Greenland and Newfoundland ; within a few 
miles of this arctic flora, and immediately to the south of that point, where 
the Gulf Stream diverges to the eastward, the Algae are of a southern 
* Marine Algce of Neio England and Adjacent Coasts. By G. W. J. 
Farlow, M.D. Reprinted from Report of the U. S. Fish Commission for 
1879. Washington Government Printing Office, 1881 . 
