a college (non-sectarian), an academy (non-sectarian) and a theological seminary (Seventh-Day Baptist). Closely associated with it also, and under the management of the university trustees, is the New York State School of Clay-Working and Ceramics (1900), one of the most efficient schools of the kind in the country. In 1908 the legislature of New York appropriated $80,000 for the establishment of a state school of agriculture in connexion with the university. The institution had its beginning in 1836 in a private school. This developed into an academy, which in 1843 was incorporated as Alfred Academy and Teachers’ Seminary; in 1857 the university was chartered under its present name. The principal industry of the village is the manufacture of roofing tiles. The township of Alfred lies within the territory purchased by Robert Morris in 1791. He sold it in the same year to a company resident in London, England. Their agent sold most of it to settlers and, it is said, named the township, when it was organized in 1806, in honour of Alfred the Great. The first settlement within its present limits was made in 1807. For several years most of the settlers were Seventh-Day Baptists, and in 1812 they organized a church here. The village of Alfred was chartered in 1887.
J. S. Minard, Allegany county and its People (Alfred, 1896).
ALFRETON, a market town in the mid-parliamentary division of Derbyshire, England, 14 m. N. by E. of Derby, on the Midland railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 17,505. It lies at a considerable elevation above the valley of a small stream tributary to the Derwent. The church of St Martin is Early English and later. The neighbourhood abounds in ironworks, collieries, quarries and potteries, and is thickly populated. To the north-east of Alfreton are South Normanton (pop. 5170), Blackwell (4144) and Tibshelf (3432); to the north Shirland (3929), to the south Ironville and other busy industrial villages. The foundation of Alfreton is traditionally ascribed to King Alfred.
ALFUROS (Alfures, Horaforas), a term of no ethnological value applied by the Malays to all the uncivilized non-Mahommedan peoples in the eastern portion of the Malay Archipelago. Its origin is uncertain, but its meaning is “wild” or “uncivilized.” The term is not restricted to the aborigines, but is far more frequently used to describe the tribes of Malayan blood.
ALGAE. The Latin word alga seems to have been the
equivalent of the English word “seaweed” and probably stood for any or all of the species of plants which form the “wrack” of a seashore. When the word “Algae” came to be employed in botanical classification as Classifi-cation.the name of a class, an arbitrary limitation had to be set to its signification, and this was not always in keeping with its original meaning. The absence of differentiation into root, stem and leaf which prevails among seaweeds, seems, for example, to have led Linnaeus to employ the term in the Genera Plantarum for a sub-class of Cryptogamia, the members of which presented this character in a greater or less degree. Of the fifteen genera included by Linnaeus among algae, not more than six—viz. Chara, Fucus, Ulva and Conferva, and in part Tremella and Byssus—would to-day, in any sense in which the term is employed, be regarded as algae. The excluded genera are distributed among the liverworts, lichens and fungi; but notwithstanding the great advance in knowledge since the time of Linnaeus, the difficulty of deciding what limits to assign to the group to be designated Algae still remains. It arises from the fact that algae, as generally understood, do not constitute a homogeneous group, suggesting a descent from a common stock. Among them there exist, as will be seen hereafter, many well-marked but isolated natural groups, and their inclusion in the larger group is generally felt to be a matter of convenience rather than the expression of a belief in their close inter-relationship. Efforts are therefore continually being made by successive writers to exclude certain outlying sub-groups, and to reserve the term Algae for a central group reconstituted on a more natural basis within narrower limits.
It is perhaps desirable, in an article like this, to treat of algae in the widest possible sense in which the term may be used, an indication being at the same time given of the narrower senses in which it has been proposed to employ it. Interpreted in this way, the place of algae in the vegetable kingdom may be shown by means of a table:—
| The Vegetable Kingdom |
Cryptogamia |
Thallophyta | Myxomycetes Fungi Algae | |||
| Bryophyta Pteridophyta |
||||||
| Phanerogamia | Gymnosperms Angiosperms |
Algae in this wide sense may be briefly described as the aggregate of those simpler forms of plant life usually devoid, like the rest of the Thallophyta, of differentiation into root, stem and leaf; but, unlike other Thallophyta, possessed of a colouring matter; by means of which they are enabled, in the presence of sunlight, to make use of the carbonic acid gas of the atmosphere as a source of carbon. It is true that certain Bryophyta (Marchantiaceae, Anthoceroteae) possess a thalloid structure similar to that of Thallophyta, and are at the same time possessed of the colouring matter of the Green Algae. Their life-cycle, however, the structure of the reproductive organs and their whole organization proclaim them to be Bryophyta (q.v.). On the other hand, certain undoubted animals (Stentor, Hydra, Bonellia) are provided with a green colouring matter by means of which they make use of atmospheric carbonic acid. A more important consideration is the occasional absence of this colour in species, or groups of species, with, in other respects, algal affinities. Such aberrant forms are to be regarded in the same light as Cuscuta and Orobanchaceae, for example, among Phanerogams. As these non-green plants do not cease to be classed with other Phanerogams, so must the forms in question be retained among algae. In all cases the loss of the colouring matter is associated with an incapacity to take up carbon from so simple a compound as carbonic acid.
It might be mentioned here that the whole group of the Fungi (q.v.), with its many thousands of species, is now generally regarded as having been derived from algae, and the system of classification of fungi devised by Brefeld is based upon this belief. The similarity of the morphological characters of one group of fungi to those of certain algae has earned for it the name of Phycomycetes or alga-fungi.
Further discussion of the general characters of algae will be deferred in order to take a brief survey of the subdivisions of the group. For this purpose there will be adopted the classification of algae into four sub-groups, founded on the nature the colouring matters present in the plant:—
| I. | Cyanophyceae, or Blue-green Algae. |
| II. | Chlorophyceae, or Green Algae. |
| III. | Phaeophyceae, or Brown Algae. |
| IV. | Rhodophyceae, or Red Algae. |
The merits and demerits of this system will appear during the description of the characters of the members of the several subdivisions.
I. Cyanophyceae.—This group derives its name from the circumstance that the cells contain in addition to the green colouring matter, chlorophyll, a blue-green colouring matter to which the term phycocyanin has been applied. To the eye, however, members of this group present a greater variety of colour than those of any other—yellow, brown, olive, red, purple, Subdivisions.violet and variations of all these being known. They undoubtedly represent the lowest grade of algal life, and their distribution rivals that of the Green Algae. They occur in the sea, in fresh water, on moist earth, on damp rocks and on the bark of trees. Certain species are regularly found in the intercellular spaces of higher plants; such are species of Nostoc in the thallus of Anthoceros, the leaves of Azolla and the roots of Cycads. Many of them enter into the structure of the lichen-thallus, as the so-called gonidia. It is remarkable that species belonging to the Oscillatoriaceae are known to flourish in hot springs, the temperature of which rises as high as 85°C.
The thallus may be unicellular or multicellular. When unicellular, it may consist of isolated cells, but more commonly the cells are held together in a common jelly (Chroococcaceae) derived from the outer layers of the cell-wall. The multicellular species consist of filaments, branched or unbranched, which arise by the repeated divisions of the cells in parallel planes, no formation of mucilage occurring in the dividing walls. Such filaments may not give rise to mucilage on the
