62 HANDY BOOK P 



its dull red fronds within tide-mark along the coasts of Ice- 

 land and Kamtschatka, Greenland, and the Kurile Isles, 

 running from the southern promontory of Kamtschatka to 

 Japan ; as likewise on the eastern shores of North America, 

 Unalasehka, and Jasmania. Botanists consequently infer 

 that a species thus widely extended is designed to subserve 

 some purpose of universal importance. Borrowing an analogy 

 from terrestrial plants, and applying the knowledge thus 

 obtained respecting things well known to such as from their 

 watery location necessarily remain obscure, they conjecture 

 that the hand- shaped rhodomenia either shelters marine 

 insects which serve as food to the finny tribes, or else that 

 they afford pasture to those innumerable shoals of herrings, 

 and different species of migratory fish, which annually resort 

 to their sterile growing-places. 



Three distinct forms are comprised under the general 

 appellation of the hand-shaped rhodomenia, the well-known 

 Dulse of the Scotch, and the Dillisk of the Irish. Young 

 botanists would hardly suppose that they pertain to the 

 same plant, and yet they by no means exhibit the extreme 

 of variation ; for some specimens are more simple than the 

 one, and more finely divided than the other. Such varieties 

 when dried occasion no small difficulty in tracing the limits 

 of the species ; but if a collector has once seen and tasted a 

 specimen of dulse when taken from the water, he has no 

 difficulty in recognizing the plant, however differing in 

 appearance. And not less curious is the fact, that if the 

 dulse grows on rocks, its fronds are broad, and slightly 

 divided ; but if attaohed to the serrated fucus, they prove 

 that this widely-diffused sea- weed derives a peculiar cha- 

 racter from the parent plant. Harvey further mentions 

 that his own experience restricts the growth of the common 

 dulse to the serrated and vessel-bearing fucae. 



This valuable plant is in great request among the Scotoh 

 and Irish as a pleasant esculent, and the old cry of " Dulse 

 and Tankle" is still heard in the streets of Edinburgh. 



