14 HANDY BOOK OP 



ing over lost homes or graves; nor yet the shadows of 

 crowding houses, where life and death alternate as years 

 pass on. Shadows, indeed, they have, such as clouds may 

 shed when speeding through the heavens, or hurrying 

 billows fling in passing — but these are beautiful. 



The Fucus nodosics, largest of British Alga3, speaks to me 

 of tempest-driven mariners, who, having kindled a fire on 

 the sands of Boeotia, with sea- weeds cast by the waves on 

 shore, found among the extinguished embers a strange sub- 

 stance, which, in after years, opened to the naturalist a 

 miniature world, populous and full of wonders as that by 

 which we are surrounded — a substance which assists the 

 astronomer in discovering new suns and systems, and num- 

 bering the stars of the milky way; or, in its most simple 

 and direct appropriation, enables the inhabitant of Britain 

 to cultivate exotic fruits and flowers. 



Yet, such is the result of that accidental circumstance ; 

 and kelp, manufactured from the Fucus nodosus and Canali- 

 culatus, with others of their kind, forms an invaluable in- 

 gredient in making glass. Observe that group of marine 

 plants growing on tide-washed rocks, and what do you see 

 in them but luxuriant developments of vegetable forms 

 — the first, especially, with ample fronds of dull olive-green, 

 tastefully contrasted with greenish-yellow receptacles, sup- 

 ported on slender stalks, each receptacle filled with a gela- 

 tinous substance, and traversed by a net- work of jointed 

 fibres. 



Chemistry reveals that those wild sea-plants contain carbo- 

 nate of soda, mixed with sulphate and muriate of the same 

 alkali, and combinations of iodine. History records that 

 scarcely a hundred years have passed since plants of the same 

 kind were left unnoticed, till an enterprising individual taught 

 his countrymen to prepare them for purposes of commerce. 

 But some there were who, wedded to old habits, protested that 

 their ancestors had never thus employed them ; and when 

 kilns were erected, and people induced by high wages to 



