162 SEA- WEEDS. 



pools, or hanging, with thousands of fronds, over 

 the smooth rocks. One very common kind is the 

 compressed Enteromorpha (Enteromorpha com- 

 pressa], and it abounds on the shores of almost 

 every land from the Arctic to the Antarctic 

 Ocean. Useless as it is to us, except as its beauty 

 may give us pleasant thoughts as we pause to look 

 upon it, yet it is a valuable article of food to the 

 poor natives of the Sandwich Isles, whose rugged 

 rocks it covers with a verdant vegetation. Its 

 fronds are from six to twelve inches long, from 

 the fineness of a hair to half an inch in width. 

 At first, the fronds seem but threads, but as it 

 grows in deeper water they grow long and broad, 

 and when the plant is fully grown, the frond is 

 divided nearly to the root into many long branches, 

 which produce others, all narrow at the base, and 

 widened at the extremities. They are tubular, 

 though more or less compressed. 



The intestine-like Entero- 

 morpha (Enteromorpha intes- 

 tinalis) is equally common, 

 not only on our sea-shores, 

 but in brackish and fresh- 

 water ditches, and in summer 

 time its fronds are often two 

 feet or more long, and some- 

 times two or three inches in 

 diameter. It is tubular also, 

 and inflated, and often waved 

 / ' IKfll I an( ^ wr i n kled, and is of thin 

 f Wl | |f / texture and pale yellow-green 

 ^ colour, fading at last to white, 



though when very young its 

 tint is bright as the meadow- 



