118 SEA-WEEDS. 



to be eaten, for the fully grown fronds have stems 

 as thick as walking sticks, and about as digestible. 

 These stems become so shrivelled and hard by 

 long exposure to the air, that knife- handles are 

 sometimes made of them. These are tipped with 

 metal, and when polished are scarcely to be dis- 

 tinguished from hart's-horn. Dr. Johnston says of 

 the plant, " In some parts of the western isles of 

 Scotland, it forms even a sort of soil on the peb- 

 bles of the beach, on which the natives sow barley ; 

 and as the sea-weed rots, the grain drops with it 

 into the interstices, so that when the harvest is 

 ready, it seems growing on a surface of polished 

 pebbles." 



We have five British species of Laminaria, all 

 flat leaf-like sea- weeds, and it is in allusion to this 

 that they received their botanic name from Lamina, 

 a thin plate. One other kind only will be noticed 

 here. This is the bulbous Laminaria (Laminaria 

 bulbosa], a plant not nearly so general as the other 

 two species, though thrown up in large masses on 

 some parts of >ur coast, chiefly on the south and 

 western shores of England, and in some places on 

 the Irish and Scottish shores. In the Orkney 

 Islands, where it abounds, it was long valued for 

 its supply for the kelp-furnace, for it is so large 

 a plant that a mass of the weed growing from 

 a single root is often a load for a man. It has a 

 short stem, and like most of this family, a fibrous 

 root at first, but this swells at length into a bulb, 

 and forms a distinction of the species. Mrs. Grif- 

 fiths measured a specimen of this plant which was 

 gathered from deep water at Torbay, and found 

 the bulb to be a foot in diameter; while the 

 whole fronds, when spread over the ground, 



