SEA-WEEDS. 165 



gar and butter, or it is eaten stewed with onions. 

 In England it is usually pickled with salt in jars, 

 and when prepared for the table is stewed, and oil 

 and lemon-juice added to it. Sometimes this 

 pretty sea-weed is washed up by the waves cling- 

 ing round the stems of other alga3 ; and at other 

 times it hangs about the piles of wood which sup- 

 port our piers. 



The Common Porphyra (Porphyra vulgaris) is 

 not so general a sea-weed on all the shores of our 

 sea-girt isle, but is very abundant on Scottish 

 coasts. It is a large plant, its fronds being com- 

 monly one or two feet in length, and two or three 

 inches wide ; and Dr. Greville mentions having 

 seen one plant which measured no less than three 

 feet and a half. The margin is much less waved 

 than in the former kind, so that the frond seems 

 almost flat, and the colour is more brilliant, being, 

 when dried, of a rich purple. It is very thin, but 

 not nearly so easily torn as the purple laver. A 

 very slender species of this genus, too, covers 

 some few rocks on our shores. This is the narrow 

 Porphyra (Porphyra linear is), which, though not a 

 quarter of an inch wide, and usually but three or 

 four inches long, is of a beautiful tint. Dr. 

 Greville remarks of it, that it is a singularly neat 

 little plant, invariably constant in its form, and 

 adds, that covering the rocks beneath Peakhead, 

 near Sidmouth, in great abundance, it rendered 

 them purple by its delicate fronds. 



The Ulvse, as well as the different species of 

 Enteromorpha, and of Porphyra, are found on the 

 shores of every land save those bound up in the 

 regions of perpetual ice and snow. They give 

 their green fringes to the rocky shores of the 



