MARINE BOTANY. 71 



was once the proud and costly ornament of regal halls ; but 

 our little marine weaver, as the author of " Excursions to 

 Arran " has observed, derived no hints from the Gobelins, 

 nor from the workmen of Arras, nor from those of Athens, 

 neither from the earliest tapissiers of the East. From the 

 time that Noah's ark rested on the mountains of Ararat, 

 the forefathers of the beautiful little limas constructed their 

 coral cottages, and lined them with well-wrought tapestry 

 in the peaceful bay of Lamlash. 



Plants pertaining to the family of Rhodomelets are in 

 general slight and elegant, often feathery and brightly 

 tinted ; and the sites they occupy are not unfrequently in 

 accordance with their delicately-ramified fronds. Thus the 

 smooth Rytiphlaea [Rytiphlcea complanata) is found amid 

 the loveliest of ocean scenery, on the pebbly beds of clear 

 rock basins, exposed at low- water to full sunshine. Harvey 

 speaks of having noticed this plant in considerable abun- 

 dance at Miltown Malbay, where it clothed the rocky base 

 of a tide-pool four or five yards in diameter, and from three 

 to six inches deep. The collector of marine plants will do 

 well to remember that the species, unless allowed to remain 

 for some hours in fresh water, will not only stain the paper 

 of a dull brown colour, but turn black and rigid. 



Few, perchance, of the elegant family of Polysiphonia 

 are more pleasing than the violet-coloured, with its bushy 

 and feathery branches and closely-connected fronds, of 

 which each division becomes more slender, till it terminates 

 in a number of fine ramuli, crowned with a tuft of fibres. 

 The colour is brown-red, more or less purple, with soft 

 irregular cells, and thus presenting an interesting type of its 

 widely-diffused brotherhood. The Violacea extends through- 

 out the shores of Northern Europe, and is found on most of 

 our British and Irish coasts, near low- water mark. Torbay 

 and Salcombe, with Falmouth Harbour, and Carnarvon, are 

 the favourite growing-places of this most interesting species. 

 The fibrous-branched, which ranges throughout the Atlantio 



