90 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



his real chance of becoming acquainted with these strange plants. 

 He must, however, rise betimes, before the treasures washed up 

 by the storm are again taken back into the depths slowly and 

 surely by the succeeding tides. Suppose we are in time, behold 

 the whole shore strewn with heaps of seaweeds — seaweeds quite 

 unknown to us before — growing as they do in the vasty deep. 

 Green, brown, olive, pink, scarlet, black, and even white seaweeds 

 are lying absolutely in thousands. We hardly know where to com- 

 mence — what to notice ! 



Let us examine one of the commonest red seaweeds : it is 

 named Callithamnion. The form is thread-shaped, branched ; in 

 some instances the roots form a mass of fibres. I picked up 

 twenty different species of this family. They are all beautiful, gener- 

 ally of a bright red or scarlet. 



Although the red seaweeds do not attain the size of the 

 olive or brown ones, still they do attain a considerable size, and 

 the delicacy of their texture places them in the front rank for 

 beauty. 



Few plants in land or water can compare with the lovely 

 C landea elegdns of Bass Strait. 



A common method of reproduction amongst red Algae is by 

 special cells borne either in the branches or in slight enlargements 

 on the edge of the frond. These cells usually break into four and 

 produce bright and red motionless spores, which are known as 

 tetraspores. From these new plants arise. 



The other method of reproduction is by special organs called 

 antherids and procarps. The antherids are borne at the ends of 

 special branches, and produce pollinoids, which are simple globose 

 cells, that float about in the water as pollen grains do in the air. 

 The procarp is also borne on a special branch. It consists in its 

 simplest form of a single cell, the cystocarp, with a long hair-like 

 prolongation, which is termed a tricogyne. The floating pollinoid 

 attaches itself to the tricogyne, and their union fertilizes the cell, 

 which in time produces not one, but several, new plants. 



But it is time to return to our storm-tossed seaweeds and notice 

 how their prototypes are utilized in other parts of the world. If 

 this seadrift were on the shores of Europe, hundreds of carts 

 would beat work removing them to manure several kinds of crops, 

 principally potatoes. Then, again, that red-leaved Ulva (Porphyra), 

 is used as food in the west of Ireland and Scotland under the 

 name of laver. A close relative of one of our red seaweeds, 

 Chondrus crispus, is called Carrageen, or Irish Moss, and is largely 

 employed in the preparation of jellies and blanc manges. That 

 olive-green Halymenia embraces a species, //. palmata, which is 

 used in Kamschatka to make a fermented drink, and in Ireland 

 the same plant is utilized in a sweetmeat preparation. 



This beautiful Gelidium is well worth notice ; it is edible, and 



