THE
ESSEX NATURALIST:
 BEING THE
Journal of the Essex Field Club
FOR 1894.
A PROVISIONAL LIST OF THE MARINE ALGAE
OF ESSEX, AND THE ADJACENT COAST.
By E. A. L. BATTERS, B.A., LL.B., F.L.S.
THE low flat sea board of the county of Essex, deeply indented by
shallow creeks, and extending for a distance of close on one
hundred miles,1 is fringed with desolate expanses of mud, alternating
with stretches of shifting sand or loose shingle, where few, if any,
natural rocks capable of affording a stable anchorage for Algae are to
be seen, even at the times of lowest tides. Few sea-weeds, and these
of the commoner kinds, were all that could be expected to grow on
such a coast, and consequently botanists have bestowed little or no
attention on the Marine Algae of the county. As was to be expected,
therefore, the sources from which a list of the Marine Algae of
Essex could be compiled are "few and far between." The Rev.
John Ray, in his "Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum," 1690,
mentions a few Essex Algae, but it is not always easy to recognise
from Ray's names the plants he intended to describe, and in many
cases it was only by an examination of the collection of plants
("Herb. Sloane," vol. cxiv., in Brit. Mus.), made by Ray's contem-
porary, the Rev. Adam Buddie, and which had been named from the
third edition of the "Synopsis," that I was able to identify some of
the species. A few—very few—Essex localities in Greville's "Algae
Britannicae," Harvey's "Phycologia Britannica," and Grattann's
1 As the crow flies the distance is hardly more than forty miles, but by following the indenta-
tions of the coast this is considerably more than doubled.
B