X> INTRODUCTION!. 



are plants that are noxmts and tiseiess. Oli^ but they are 

 sea-v^eeds, we say in mitigation. And does that mend the 

 matter ? Horace and Yirgil knew that right well, and as 

 with all their poetic genius they knew not a word of English, 

 they gave them the outlandish name of Al(/a : — nay more, 

 Horace speaks of them as " i?mlilis Alga" useless Sea- 

 weeds ! And tasteful Yirgil goes even beyond his friend 

 Horace, for, when speaking of something which he regards 

 as worthless and filthy, he says that it is " Algct projectd 

 vilior" viler than the Sea-weed cast out on the shore. Its 

 very calamities are turned against it : " Refunditur Alga," 

 says another poet, the sea loathes it and flings it out on 

 the land ! — Alas for the poor Sea-weeds, when the princes 

 of poetry in the Augustan age are against them ! But, as 

 there were no Sea-weeds in the streets of Rome or in the 

 yellow Tiber, they may have spoken thoughtlessly, and 

 without any malice prepense, and we would therefore ap- 

 peal from the ancient court of the Muses, and consider 

 what character they sustain in the present day. 



In Scotland, Sea- weeds go very generally under the 

 name of wrack, or in the south and west of Scotland wreck, 

 and not unfrequently vrcck ; and in this we have one of the 

 numberless instances of the effect which the trrcat inter- 



