EDITORIAL PREFACE. 
Part II. of this handbook deals in the main with the Rhodophyceae or Red 
Algae. This class of sea-weeds is by far the largest so far as number of 
species is concerned but has remained one of the least known groups of plants 
in South Australia. This has been due in large measure to the fact that no 
comprehensive account of the Australian Algae has been published since 
Harvey’s “Phycologia Australica” in 1858-1863. Lists of species of South 
Australian Algae have been published on one or two occasions but 
descriptions of species, keys and illustrations have not been brought together 
in one place but occur scattered throughout many and often obscure 
publications. 
This handbook is the work of several collaborators. Mr. A. H. S. Lucas, 
who compiled Part I. of this series, undertook to prepare Part II. At the 
time of his death in June, 1936, the manuscript was in note form to the end 
of the Subfamily Laurencieae. Mrs. F. Perrin, of Tasmania, kindly con- 
sented to complete the text, and Mrs. Perrin is therefore responsible for the 
arrangement of the work of Mr. Lucas and for the descriptions from the 
Laurencieae to the end of the classification. 
The system of classification used by Mr. Lucas and Mrs. Perrin in this 
handbook is that of De Toni “Sylloge algarum omnium hucusque cognitarum” 
(1889-1924). The basis of this classification is a morphological one and in 
some measure is an artificial one. "Within recent years investigations of the 
life histories of the Brown and of the Red Algae have tended to place classi- 
fication upon an entirely new basis, and it appeared desirable that serious 
students of the Algae should have knowledge of modern classification. 
The Handbooks Committee therefore invited Mr. H. B. S. Womersley and 
Mr. J. R. Harris, under the guidance of Professor J. G. W r ood, to prepare 
revised classifications of the Green, Brown, and Red Algae which occur in 
South Australia. Mr. Womersley has prepared the appendices on the Green 
and Red Algae. He has also added numerous descriptions of species and 
several keys not given by Mr. Lucas and Mrs. Perrin, and using the algae 
collections in the Herbarium of the University of Adelaide has given definite 
records of species in South Australian localities. He has also revised the 
genus Polysiphonia to include all species recorded in the Southern Australian 
region. Mr. Harris has written an Introduction, which gives a generalized 
account of the life history of the Red Algae and also the revised classification 
of the Brown Algae in the Appendix. 
The illustrations are from photographs by Mrs. Perrin and by Messrs. 
•Womersley and Harris and also after those in Harvey’s “Phycologia 
Australica.” Miss Gwen D. Walsh, of the South Australian Museum, also 
assisted in the preparation of both photographs and drawings. 
The Handbooks Committee realises that this book forms but the basis for 
further work which it hopes will by its means be stimulated. Descriptions 
of species, and especially the range of form, are admittedly often inadequate 
— and further collections will inevitably enlarge the area of distribution of 
many species, but these deficiencies are unavoidable in the present state of 
our knowledge of the Marine Algae in this State. 
