132 COMMON SEAWEEDS. 



There are seven species of this seaweed, and they 

 all grow in such deep water as to he more frequently- 

 picked up after a storm than gathered from the rock, 

 except, indeed, the first I shall notice : 



Rhodyme:nta Palmata. — "We gather this abund- 

 antly on the coast of Ireland and Scotland : every child 

 will tell us it is Dulse, or Duillisg, or Dillisk — the 

 leaf of the water — which poor Irish families eat as the 

 only relish they can have with their potatoes, and 

 Highland crones steep in water, and give medicinally 

 in fevers. In the islands of the Archipelago, it is a 

 favourite addition to their ragout. For our album, in 

 truth, the frond is rather thick, and does not adhere 

 as well to paper as the finer species. "We find it in a 

 young state on the stems of the Laminaria, or para- 

 sitic on Fucas Serratus. The red, ribbony fronds, 

 spreading sometimes like a fan, are easily recognized 

 everywhere. The fruit is, on some plants, a cloudy 

 patch of dots on each expanded tip, or berries seated 

 on the margin of the frond. 



Rhodyme^ia Ciliata. — Sometimes at extreme 

 low-water mark we may gather this, and recognize it 

 by the fibrous root, the broad frond edged with small 

 leaf-like segments ; and if it is in fruit, the tubercles 

 or coccidia are seated along the margin, looking like 

 birds' heads, the beak on one side, and the dark mass 

 of spores resembling the eye. Colour, a deep, full 

 red, semi-transparent when fresh, becomes darker in 

 drying. After a storm it is common on all our coasts. 



