The Land of the Hills and the Glens 



Loch Spelve. The labour entailed in gathering the bladder- 

 wrack, or Fucus, was greater than that necessary for the 

 collecting of the tangle. The wrack was not cast up by the 

 sea in sufficient quantities for the requirements of the in- 

 dustry, and had to be cut as it floated in the water, the 

 workers using boats for the purpose. It is, therefore, a 

 fact of no little interest, and one which must be borne in 

 mind when the revival of the kelp trade is under discussion, 

 that the weed which was almost entirely used when the 

 industry was at its prime, one hundred years ago — the Fucus 

 or bladder-wrack — is now held to be of so little value that 

 it is no longer worth exploitation. It will readily be seen 

 that this affects the revival of the industry along the more 

 sheltered parts of the coastline, where the tangle is uncommon 

 as compared with the kelp-wrack of earlier days. The reason 

 for this change in the material used is the fact that the pro- 

 ducts extracted from the kelp ash a hundred years ago have 

 now been superseded in the manufactures in which they 

 were formerly used. During the height of the kelp boom, 

 as was pointed out above, the ash was mainly employed in 

 the making of glass and soap, seaweed being then practically 

 the only source of soda, which is necessary in the manu- 

 facture of soap. But the discovery of the Leblanc process 

 of making soda and the repeal of the salt tax with the lower- 

 ing of the import duty on barilla, caused the disastrous fall 

 in the prices which, it was thought, would at one time 

 cause the industry completely to die out. 



The prices obtained, even over a small area, vary con- 

 siderably, so much so that the natives sometimes draw lots 

 for the best "beat." Thus the tangles washed up on sandy 

 beaches fetch, may be, no more than one-third of the price 

 obtained from the weed gathered from rocky or shingly 

 shores not more than a hundred yards away, on account 

 of the grit which attaches itself to them and which later on 

 contaminates the ash. 



A point to be remembered is that the industry is one 



182 



