116 SEA- WEEDS. 



different from our own ; but figurative as are the 

 language and customs of Eastern people, the 

 opinion of Barrow is highly probable, that this 

 practice is significant of the resources of the sea 

 to those who choose to avail themselves of its 

 benefits. 



We have said that the Sea-belt is common 

 every where around our island, and both this and 

 the Tangle, or Fingered Oar-weed, often lie in 

 heaps on the beach, ready to be carried away for 

 the lands. Both of them, too, are brought every 

 summer inland, by hundreds of visitors to the sea, 

 who hang them up in their houses as hygrometers, 

 and they afford good indications of approaching 

 rain, by their damp flagging state when the atmo- 

 sphere is moist. 



The Tangle or Fingered Oar- weed (Laminaria 

 digitata) is a long flat leaf of an olive- green colour, 

 which, when young, is eaten, but after its early 

 stage it separates into a number of segments like 

 ribbons, from the point of the leaf, to within a 

 few inches of the stem. Children run about the 

 beach with handfuls of these waving ribbons, at 

 our sea-side towns, and the first idea which one 

 might have, would be that these plants were torn 

 into shreds by the waves ; but on examining them, 

 the edges are found smooth as if cut by a knife, 

 and not rudely rent asunder. This sea-weed is 

 known on our coast as the Sea Girdle and Sea 

 .Hanger. In the Orkney Isles it is called Red 

 Ware, and the Scottish Highlanders term it Sea- 

 wand. The dried stalks, often thick and woody, 

 and several feet long, are burnt for fuel on the 

 Orkney and Shetland Islands, and the fronds and 

 stems are boiled in Nordland as food for cattle. 



