14 SEA-SIDE PLANTS. 



and furnished the best soda used in this quarter of 

 the world. Its produce is called by the merchant, 

 the Spanish or Alicant soda. The large cultiva- 

 tors of this soda plant along the Mediterranean 

 shores of Spain, found during the long war, in the 

 early part of this century, so great an increase in 

 the value of the soda, that they wished to extend 

 the culture of the saltwort. They therefore tried 

 the experiment of forming some salsola fields far- 

 ther inland. But the plan proved unsuccessful; 

 for although the plant was luxuriant, yet the 

 quantity of soda was so much diminished as to 

 render it of little worth. The planters ascertained 

 the fact, that, as long as the land sloped upwards 

 from the sea, the saltwort was rich in its alkaline 

 products; but when the field sloped inland, the 

 soda decreased. The saline soil, and the saline 

 winds and vapours of the ocean, were needed 

 to render it a true saltwort. Neither is our native 

 species a plant which flourishes remote from the 

 sea. 



It was observed, in an earlier page, that many 

 plants of the deserts resemble those of our sea- 

 shore plants in their succulence, their saltish 

 flavour, and glaucous green hue. These plants, 

 too, yield the same product. Thus the ice-plant 

 which we rear in the hot-house, because of the 

 beauty of its ice-bespangled foliage, is cultivated 

 on the salt lands of Greece for its soda, and called 

 Barilla, and the knot-flowered fig marigold of the 

 desert saline soils of Egypt, is gathered and 

 burned for the same purpose. 



But turning from plants possessing little beauty, 

 though abundantly compensating for its absence 

 by their utility to man,- we must proceed to one 



