324 The Commercial Products of the Sea. 



The Chinese " Herbal " mentions various species of sea- 

 weed as possessing strong and well-known therapeutic pro- 

 perties, and of special value in the dispersion of hard 

 tumours, — goitre, for example. They have long been ac- 

 quainted with the general virtues of the various species of 

 Laminaria, and these varieties are mentioned as occurring 

 along the coasts of the Eastern Sea, the coast of Corea, 

 and the Malayan Archipelago. The great " Herbal " 

 speaks of seven chief species. . The people in the maritime 

 provinces of China eat seaweed plentifully, both medici- 

 nally and as a vegetable food, besides using it as a 

 manure ; in this custom resembling the inhabitants of our 

 own Hebrides. It is prescribed alone, chiefly in the form 

 of tincture, its saltish taste having been first washed away, 

 or it is mixed up with other medicines in various pre- 

 scriptions. The uses to which the different kinds of sea- 

 weed are put correspond with our own before the discovery 

 of iodine. 



In the midst of the large islands of Java, Sumatra, 

 Borneo, etc., and the thousands of islets known under the 

 geographical denomination of the Indian Archipelago, the 

 seaweeds, favoured in their growth by the warm water of 

 the tropics, flourish in abundance. 



The Malays collect certain species which, boiled down, 

 produce a glue or kind of gelose, known under the name 

 of agar-agar, and of which China uses a large quantity. 



In lower Cochin China, the part most fertile, and 

 which belongs to France, they collect the algae, to which 

 they give the generic name of rau-cau, which is synony- 

 mous with " marine pot-herbs." They are collected princi- 

 pally on the rocky parts of the Asiatic continent, in the 

 Gulf of Siam, the islands of Pho-Cok, Poulto-Condor, and, 

 in fact, all along the indented coasts traversed at a short 



