OF THE 
BAT ADD HARBOR OB NEW TORI. 
However desirable and convenient it may be to have one common and univer¬ 
sal classification, experience teaches that no author can frame a system entirely sa¬ 
tisfactory, or one not subject to mutation and modification. Having no theory of my 
own, and no decided preference for any particular system, I will follow as near as 
may be convenient a general outline of all the modern classifications, and will place 
the whole under the following :— 
Class, ALG-iE. 
Natural character .—Aquatic cryptogamia, or flowerless plants. Their organs 
of nourishment are at present unknown. 
I propose to treat only of those that are marine, or that inhabit the salt water, 
and such only as are indigenous to, or are occasionally found in the Bay and Harbor 
of New York. These we will divide into the following 
Family L FUQACBiBL Har. 
Natural character .—Olive green, occasionally approaching dull brown or yellow, 
becoming nearly black in drying ; of a tough, leathery substance ; spores contained in 
swollen portions of the plant, and communicating with the surface by a pore or open¬ 
ing, through which the spore at maturity escapes. It is divided into the following: 
Genus, SARGASSUM. Ag. 
Stalked nerved leaves, stalked air vessels, receptacles small; linear, tuberculated ; 
mostly in clusters, pierced by numerous spores which communicate with spherical 
conceptacles. 
No. 1. S. hacciferum , Turn. Stem cylindrical, slender, much branched ; leaves 
linear serrated, mostly without pores : air vessels spherical, on cylindrical stalks ; re¬ 
ceptacles unknown .—Grew 
Very rare in our Bay, and probably does not grow here. I found it twice at Staten Island, on the shore 
at the mouth of the harbor. 
