292 COLLECTING SEA-WEEDS. 



chisel must not be sucli as carpenters use, but one 

 made wholly of iron, tipped with steel, such as is 

 used by smiths, and technically called a cold cMsel. 



Sometimes, especially if the shore we are about to 

 search be strewn with large stones or boulders, it will 

 be well to secure the attendance of a man with a 

 crow-bar, to turn over the stones ; as on their under 

 surface, and beneath their shadow, valuable specimens 

 are often found. With the same instrument, inserted 

 into the fissures, great pieces of loose slaty rock may 

 be wrenched off, which are very productive. 



Collecting Sea-weeds. — Thus armed, we sally 

 forth, choosing for our explorations a spot where low 

 dark ledges of shelving rock run out into the sea, full 

 of clefts and fissures half concealed by Bladder-weed 

 and Tangle ; or where the solid rock shoots up in 

 irregular angular masses, scooped and hollowed into 

 numberless little pools and basins, with dark, slimy 

 caverns here and there, and rifts of shingly sand 

 between. An unpractised foot would find the walking 

 precarious and dangerous, for the rocks are rough and 

 sharp, and the dense matting of black Bladder-weed 

 with which they are covered, conceals many abrupt and 

 deep clefts beneath its slimy drapery. These fissures, 

 however, are valuable to us. We lift up the hanging 

 mass of olive-weed (Fucus) from the edge, and find 

 the sides of the clefts often fringed with the most 

 delicate and lovely forms of sea-weed ; such, for 

 example, as the winged Delesseria [D. alata), which, 

 grows in thin, much-cut leaves of the richest crimson 

 hue, and the feathery Ptilota {P.^lumcsa), of a duller 

 red. Beneath the shadow of the coarser weeds, as 



