and generally in the most perfect state of fructification, to which great attention is paid, and where it is diœcious two specimens are given. I have invariably quoted the 'Alg. Danm.' in the following pages, as an acknowledged standard, and I refer to these quotations in proof of the extent of its value. I cannot conclude without warmly expressing my own obligations to my friend Mrs. Griffiths for a most liberal supply of all the interesting plants of her beautiful neighbourhood, and for valuable observations on their habits, and especially their fructification; and I may truly affirm that if Mrs. Wyatt's volumes owe their chief value to this lady's oversight, this Manual is no less to be considered a child of her benevolence, for had she not contributed the specimens it would have been impossible for me to have described many of the most interesting plants. My residence has never been, for any length of time, near the sea, and latterly having lived out of Europe, my opportunities of collecting British Algæ have been cut off, and I am consequently wholly dependant on the liberality of my algological friends. Among these Mrs. Griffiths deservedly holds the first place, but I should be most ungrateful did I omit my thanks to others who have favoured me with specimens, and no less valuable notes; and chiefly to MISS CUTLER, MISS BALL, MISS A. TAYLOR, SIR W. J. HOOKER, MR. BORRER, DR. GREVILLE, DR. WALKER ARNOTT, MR. RALFS, DR. POLLEXFEN, Rev. M. J. BERKELEY, MR. W. THOMPSON and Dr. Drummond, of Belfast, MR. J. T. MACKAY, and MR. D. MOORE. the herbaria of my friends Sir W. J. Hooker and J. T. Mackay, I have had an opportunity of consulting most of the original specimens collected by MESSRS. TURNER, BRODIE, DILLWYN, Hooker, BORRER, MISS HUTCHINS, and others, and on which the species figured and described in 6 ENGLISH BOTANY' and DILLWYN'S BRITISH CONFERVÆ' were founded; and I have thus had ample means of correcting several doubtful synonyms.

In

The question, cui bono? to what useful end are your pursuits? has often been asked of naturalists, but it has been already too often and too triumphantly answered by abler pens than mine, to render it necessary for me to apologise for indulging a love of Natural History, or to defend it from the aspersions of those who either fear or despise it. Happily the audience to which I should address myself is neither so numerous nor so respectable as it was thirty years ago; it is becoming every day less so, and will soon be confined to the ignorant and the sensual. To those few well-informed persons who still, from old prejudices, accuse us

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of dropping buckets into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up,"

we may say that till the well of creation be emptied there is no danger of our returning from our labours without abundant food for thought, and if we do not always make the best use of it, the blame must rest with us and not with Natural History. The sportsman, it is true, often pursues his game with intense ardour till it is brought down, and then ceases to regard it with interest. So, I fear, it too often is with naturalists, but it is not necessarily so. Nay, of all men, they who are best acquainted with the works of the Divine finger, and who know how justly it may be said "we are fearfully and wonderfully made," are surely most bound to cling to the truths of revelation, for they have continually before them collateral evidences of the certainty of those "invisible things" which are “clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse." If they too often neglect the true use of this knowledge, and rest satisfied with the knowledge itself, the fault and the loss is their own, and must not be charged to Science. It is enough for her if she but furnish

food which is capable of nourishing the well-directed heart; it is not her province either to cleanse that heart, or to give it powers of digestion. of digestion. For this she must refer her votary to a higher and a holier voice; and if she ever speak of looking

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she does so with a humble deference to her elder sister, whose province it is to lead the heart to that contemplation. Science and Religion must not be confounded: each has her several path, distinct, but not hostile: each in her way is friendly to man, and, where both unite, they will ever be found to be his best protectors :-the one a light to his eyes," opening to him the mysteries of the material universe;― the other "a lamp to his feet," leading him to the immaterial, and incorruptible, and eternal. The "eye," it is true, will grow dim when the light of this world fails; and happy is he who then has "a lamp," lighted from heaven and trimmed on earth, to guide him through the hours of darkness. But the eye must not be blamed because it is not the lamp; nor should science be disdained because she leaves us far short of just conceptions of the invisible world. Her highest flight is but to the threshold of religion; for what a celebrated writer has said of philosophy generally, is equally applicable to every branch of scientific enquiry. "In wonder. all philosophy began; in wonder it all ends: and admiration fills up the interspace. But the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance; the last is the parent of adoration. The first is the birth-throe of our knowledge; the last is its euthanasy and apotheosis."

W. H. H.

Cape Town, Cape of Good Hope,

October 5, 1840.

SYNOPSIS

OF THE

FAMILIES AND GENERA.

SERIES I. MELANOSPERMEÆ. Plants of an olive-green or olive-brown colour, and cellular or filamentous structure; growing in the sea. Fructification contained in definite capsules or receptacles, or in distinct sori. Seeds dark coloured.

FAM. I. FUCOIDEE. Marine plants of an olive-brown colour, changing to black in the air; of a leathery or woody substance, and fibrous structure, tearing with facility in a longitudinal direction. Root scutate; in some species accompanied with creeping fibres. Frond flat, compressed or filiform, in many producing distinct leaves; and in most, furnished with air-vessels. Fructification: sphærical clusters of opaque seeds, surrounded by a pellucid limbus, imbedded in distinct gelatinous receptacles, and finally escaping by external pores.

1. SARGASSUM. Air-vessels stalked. Leaves distinct.

2. CYSTOSEIRA. Air-vessels simple, innate in the branches. Receptacles small, having distinct cells in which the seeds are contained.

3. HALYDRYS. Air-vessels stalked, lanceolate, divided into several compartments by transverse septa.

4. Fucus. Air-vessels (when present) immersed in the frond. Receptacles swollen, containing clusters of seeds imbedded in mucus.

B