140 
Reviews. 
THE BRITISH FRESHWATER ALGAT 
A Treatise on the British Freshwater Alga;. By G. S. West, M.A., 
A.R.C.S., F.L.S., Professor of Natural History at the Royal 
Agricultural College, Cirencester ; etc. Cambridge : at the 
University Press, 1904. Price 10/6. 
A NEW systematic account of the British Freshwater Alga; has 
been urgently needed for some time. Cooke’s work, published 
in 1882-4, is not only unsatisfactory in many respects, but is quite 
out of date; and during the last fifteen years so much has been 
done, not only in the investigation of our British forms, but also 
in the advancement of our knowledge of the general morphology 
and life-histories of these fascinating plants, that a treatment on 
entirely fresh lines had become imperative. 
Mr. G. S. West, together with his father, Mr. W. West, has 
been almost alone in this country during recent years in upholding 
the traditions so worthily established by Ralfs and Hassall. 
Their contributions to our systematic knowledge of the fresh¬ 
water algae have been numerous, and always distinguished by 
independent research and scholarly accuracy of treatment. It is 
quite safe to say that no one else in Britain possesses Mr. West’s 
wide knowledge of the green freshwater forms, so that British algo- 
logists will naturally welcome the present work with special pleasure. 
Mr. West devotes thirty-three pages to his Introduction, and 
to a brief treatment of general topics connected with the Algae, 
such as the general features of their structure, polymorphism, 
the principles upon which their classification is based, and so on. 
The Introduction contains some very interesting remarks on the 
distribution of freshwater algae in the British Isles, from which it 
appears that the mountainous districts of the north and west, 
consisting of Palaeozoic and igneous rocks, contain a far greater 
number both of species and individuals than other parts of the 
country, and especially than the Fen districts of East Anglia, which 
certainly might have been expected to possess a more various algal 
flora, considering the great extent of water and the very numerous 
aquatic phanerogams they contain. 
The pages devoted to the different methods of multiplication 
and reproduction obtaining among the Algje, would, we think, have 
gained considerably if these topics had been treated from the 
evolutionary standpoint; the relation of vegetative cell-division 
among the primitive motile forms to zoospore-formation, and of 
this to the isogamous union of planogametes form the logical basis 
