256 Mr. Glassford's History and Description of the Kelp Manufacture. 



composed of carbonate of lime, either red or green when fresh, 

 becoming white and brittle on exposure to the air. (These must 

 not bo confounded with the true Zoophytes, which often assume 

 the appearance of plants.) 



The plants which furnish kelp belong to the two first groups, and 

 include Fucus nodosus, F. serratus, and F. vesiculosus ; Laminaria 

 digitata, and L. saccJiarina; Halidrys siliquosa ; Alaria esculeuta ; 

 Rhodomenia palmata, &c. &c. 



The tangle or staffa, as it is termed in the Gaelic, is, from its size and 

 value, the most prominent, and is the especial object of attention. In 

 Ireland, where the kelpers confine their attention, in some places exclu- 

 sively, to the making of drift-weed kelp, it is entirely prepared from the 

 stems of the tangle, which are carefully separated from the wreck, carried 

 to their houses, and laid on the tops of dikes, &c, to dry. The more 

 leafy portions of the wreck are carried up and spread on the ground in 

 the winter months, for manure. On the Irish shores, it is said, that the 

 drift-weed comes in mostly during the end of April, and beginning of 

 May, when, it is believed by the people, that the plants are shedding 

 their leaves ; this they term the Scawee, a name indicative of great plenty, 

 in their language. It is at this period that all hands are congregated on 

 the shores for the kelp making. Horses and carts, or cars, donkeys with 

 creels slung on their backs, men, women and children, are busily engaged 

 collecting and saving the drift-wreck. Enormous quantities are in 

 this way thrown in, collected, and burnt into kelp, or taken for manure 

 by the small farmers on the shores of Ireland. The method of burning 

 there, is somewhat differently practised. A large, and nearly square, 

 hole of eighteen inches deep, being dug in a convenient place, and the 

 wreck there burned. It is similarly managed for the coraging or fusion, 

 but is always in larger masses than our Highland kelp, it is generally 

 sophisticated with sand, gravel, and stones, to a large extent, and its 

 value much deteriorated ; occasionally this is so deliberately done, that 

 one workman is constantly adding those foreign materials, while the 

 others are raking them into the fused mass, so as to mix the whole 

 well and intimately together. In this way the kelp gets as much 

 as it will stand, as they term it, and as such goes into market. The 

 Irish drift -weed kelp, when carefully and honestly prepared, as it 

 sometimes is on the Irish shores, is a very valuable article, and 

 so very rich in iodine, that during the high price of that article in 

 1845, the kelp, in some cases, brought £10 per ton. Drift-weed kelp 

 can be readily distinguished from the Cut-weed kelp, by its appearance. 

 The former contains masses of the charred portions of the stems of the 

 tangle through its broken surface, while the latter is full of the 

 charred cells and vesicles of the Fucus vesiculosus, and nodosus. In this 

 way, by a careful inspection of broken masses of kelp, the weeds from 

 which it is made are easily discerned, and its value may be readily 



