THE SEA GRASS 141 



sometimes green, and sometimes yellow, and 

 sometimes purple. Like the dulse, it is often 

 used for food, being boiled down into a kind 

 of jelly, and then either eaten by itself, or 

 mixed with tea or coffee. It makes very good 

 size, too, and is used a good deal in the manu- 

 facture of calico. Farmers use it, too, for fattening 

 calves, and also for mixing with the potatoes 

 or meal with which the pigs are fed. So that 

 altogether it is a very useful sea-weed indeed. 



PLATE XLVIII 

 THE SEA GRASS (2) 



This is a very pretty sea-weed, which you may 

 often find growing in great quantities in the 

 pools which are left among the rocks as the 

 tide goes down. When its long, narrow fronds 

 are waving to and fro in the water it really 

 looks most lovely, and you can almost fancy 

 that you are gazing down into fairyland. And 

 as the shrimps and prawns and little fishes dart 

 in and out among its bright green leaves, one 

 might almost imagine them to be the fairies! 



The fronds of this pretty sea-weed vary a good 

 deal in width, for sometimes they are like strips 

 of narrow ribbon, and sometimes they are scarcely 

 broader than hairs. 



