202 



ALG^E. 



[CHAP. 



with a motley collection of star-fishes, sea-urchins, 

 mussels, and the remarkable clusters of eggs of the 

 whelk and cuttlefishes ? Here, too, it is we find 

 those strange eggs of the dog-fish Mermaids' 

 purses as they are popularly 

 called, as though such superior 

 beings as the Mer-folk would be 

 troubled with such things as 

 purses ! We do not believe they 

 are possessed of pockets wherein 

 to keep them if they had them. 



But you recollect the seaweeds ? 

 First of all there is that tough, 

 brownish species with narrow- 

 branching fronds studded here 

 and there chiefly where the frond 

 branches out with air-bladders, 

 which children are fond of ex- 

 ploding by pressure between 

 finger and thumb. This is the 

 Bladder Wrack or Fucus vesicu- 

 losus, and is most common on all 

 rocky shores, covering as it does 

 great areas of low rocks along the 

 shore. We have painful recollec- 

 tions of this species. Not in- 

 frequently have we, in hurrying 

 over the wrack-covered rocks, 

 elated with some choice find, slipped on the fronds 

 of this plant and been hurled flat on our back on 

 the rugged, uneven surface of the rocks. The office 

 of the bladders is, of course, to give buoyancy to the 



FIG. isi. Fucits nodosus, 

 Knotted Fucus. 



