SEAWEEDS 
INTRODUCTION 
THE study of seaweeds is of very modern origin, 
and nothing beyond casual recognition of their 
existence is to be found in the literature and 
memorials of early times. The Greeks have left us 
engraved figures of Gorgons whose heads were 
decorated with seaweeds; there is but one mention 
of them in the Bible, when Jonah exclaims, 
“The depths closed me round about, the weeds 
were wrapped about my head”; and the re- 
ferences in Latin literature, even that of the poets, 
such as the ‘ Alga projecta vilior” of Virgil 
and the “inutilis Alga” of Horace are merely 
contemptuous. While other plants received notice 
and were the subjects of study in these early times 
and during the middle ages, the flora of the sea 
remained within its confines—a hortus inclusus within 
a barrier that still jealously hides much from our 
knowledge. In Sir Hans Sloane’s great herbaria of 
many travellers and collectors, preserved in the 
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