190 HIGHWATER MARK. 



with metal they are hardly to be distinguished from 

 hart's-horn.* If you are disposed to try the experi- 

 ment, for I cannot say, probatum est, I would 

 recommend that the stem should be well soaked in 

 fresh water, to avoid the unpleasant effects of the 

 salt alternately drying and deliquescing. 



At the summit of this stem we see what we may 

 fancy to have originally been a great piece of well- 

 curried calf-skin, some three or four feet broad in 

 every direction. But this has been irregularly split 

 into straps of varying width, almost as far down as 

 the union of the plate with the stem ; and the ex- 

 tremities of these divisions are, in such a specimen 

 as this, rudely torn and jagged. The surface, how- 

 ever, is beautifully smooth and glossy, of a rich dark- 

 brown hue ; the texture is firm and tough, and yet so 

 flexible, that we cannot help thinking it a pity that it 

 has not yet been turned to account by any enterpris- 

 ing cordwainer of the " pannus corium" vein. Buck- 

 horn from the stem, and buckskin from the leaf, 

 would be a pretty double manufacture from the "alga 

 vilis" 



But in picking up a great tangle like this, we find 

 much more to instruct and delight us than the actual 

 plant. The wonderful principle of parasitism which 

 pervades nature is full of interest. Perhaps the poet 

 assayed a somewhat loftier flight than our present 

 observations warrant, when he, too rigorously, as- 

 serted, that 



* Neill. 



