232 TI1E FARMER AT HOME. 



ing, leaps fifteen feet at a time. The limbs of the Kangaroo are 

 strangely disproportioned ; the fore legs being small and short, whilst 

 the hinder are long and powerful. The tail is very thick at its base, 

 gradually tapering, and appears to act as a supplemental limb, when 

 the animal assumes its usual erect or sitting posture, in which position 

 it is supported by the joint action of the tail and its hinder legs. This 

 conformation also enables it to take amazing leaps. They use their 

 tails and hinder feet as weapons of defence. When they are pursued 

 and overtaken by dogs, they turn, and seizing them with their fore- 

 feet, strike them with their hinder extremities, and often tear them to 

 such a degree as to destroy them. 



KELP. In Commerce, the ashes of sea weeds. On the Scottish 

 coast, the sea weed is cut close to the rocks, during the summer season, 

 and afterwards spread out upon the shore to dry, care being taken to 

 turn it occasionally, to prevent fermentation. It is then stacked for 

 a few weeks, and sheltered from the rain, till it becomes covered with 

 a white saline efflorescence, and is now ready for burning. This is 

 usually accomplished in a round pit, lined with brick or stone ; but 

 the more approved form for a kiln is oblong, about two feet wide, eight 

 to eighteen long, and from two to three deep : the bottom of this is 

 covered with brush, upon which a little dried sea weed is scattered, 

 and fire is applied at one extremity ; the sea weed is now thrown on 

 gradually, as fast as the combustion reaches the surface, and, should 

 there be much wind, it is necessary to protect it by covering the sides 

 with sods ; after the whole is burnt, the mass gradually softens, be- 

 ginning at the sides, when it should be slowly stirred up with a heated 

 iron bar, and incorporated, till it acquires a semifluid consistence. 

 This part of the process requires considerable dexterity ; and, if the 

 mass continues dry, a little common salt should be thrown on, which 

 acts as a flux. When cold, it is broken up, and is now ready for sale. 



Notwithstanding that kelp contains but two or three per centum 

 of carbonate of soda, while Spanish barilla often contains twenty or 

 thirty, the manufacture of this article has increased prodigiously on 

 the northern coasts of Great Britain and the neighboring islands. 

 Small farms on the Orkneys, which formerly rented for forty pounds a 

 year, have now risen to three hundred pounds, on account of their 

 kelp shores ; and so much importance is attached to this branch of 

 business, that, along sandy shores, stones have been placed within the 

 flood-mark, which, in a short time, become covered with sea weed. 

 Many thousand tons are thus manfactured annually, and are sold in 

 the various parts of Great Britain, at the rate of from seven to ten 

 pounds per ton. New England, being the only part of the United 

 States which has a rocky coast, would seem to be the only part of our 

 country fitted for the manufacture of kelp. The greater rise of the 

 tides north of Cape Cod, arid especially in the more eastern parts, is 



