IV. INTEODUCTION. 35 



blown on by a stall-fed " short-liorn" that looks for vegetables of a higher 

 order. 



To obtain such food for the high bred cow, the Alga? must be applied in another 

 way — namely, as manure. For this purpose they are very largely used in the 

 Bi'itish Islands, where " sea-wrack" is carried many miles inland, and successfully 

 applied in the raising of green crops. On the west coast of Ireland the refuse of 

 the sea furnishes the poor man with the greater part of the manure on which he 

 depends for raising his potatoes. All kinds of seaweed are indiscriminately applied ; 

 but the larger kinds of Laminarue are preferred. As these rapidly decompose and 

 melt into tlie ground, they should, in common with other kinds, be used fresh, and 

 not suffered to lie long in the pit, where they soon lose their fertilizing properties. 

 The crops of potatoes thus raised being generall)'^ abundant, but the quality rarely 

 good, sea- wrack is more suitable to the coarser than to the finer varieties of the 

 potato. It is, however, considered excellent for various green crops, and a good top 

 dressing for grass land, and its use is by no means confined to the poorer districts. 

 The employment of sea-wrack is limited only bj^ the expense of conveying so bulky 

 a material to a distance from the sea or a navigable river. 



Though the agricultural profits derived from the Alga) are considerable, a still 

 larger revenue was once obtained by burning the Fiici^ and collecting their ashes 

 as a source of carbonate of soda, a salt which exists abundantly in most of them. 

 Fucus vesiculosus, nodosus and serratus, the three commonest European kinds, 

 yielded, up to a recent period, a very considerable rental to the owners of tidal 

 rocks on the bleakest and most barren islands of the north of Scotland, and on all 

 similar rocky shores on the English and Irish coasts. A single proprietor (Lord 

 Macdonald) is said to have derived £10,000 per annum, for several successive 

 years, from the rent of his hip shores ; and the collecting and preparation of the 

 kelj) affbrded a profitable employment to many thousands of the inhabitants of 

 Orkney, Shetland, and the Hebrides. 



During the last European war, when England was shut out from the markets 

 from which a supply of soda was previously obtained, almost the whole of the 

 alkali used by soap-boilers was derived from the kelp or sea-weed ashes collected in 

 Scotland. The quantity annually made in favourable years, between 1790 and 

 1800, amounted on the authority of Dr. Barry* to 3,000 tons, which then fetched 

 from £8 to £lO sterling per ton ; but at a later period of the war rose from £18 

 to £20. It is also stated by the same author that within the 80 years, from 1720 

 to 1800, which succeeded the first introduction of the kelp trade, the enormous 

 sum of £595,000 was realized by the proprietors of kelp shores and their tenants 

 and labourers. 



Yet so great was the prejudice of the islanders against this lucrative trade, when 

 first proposed to them, " and," to quote Dr. Greville, " so violent and unanimous 

 was the resistance, that ofiicers of justice were found necessary to pi'otect the 

 individuals employed in the work. Several trials were the consequences of these 

 outrages. It was gravely pleaded in a court of law, ' that the suffocating smoke 

 that issued from the kelp kilns would sicken or kill every species of fish on the 



* History of the Orkney Islands, p. 383 (as quoted by Greville, see Alg. Brit. Introd. p. xxi. et seq.) 



