148 Directions fur preserving Sea Plants. 



very transparent in drying, and is a great ornament to the herbarium. 

 In the north of Ireland it is called murlins, and is often gathered for 

 eating, but the part used is the leaflets, and not the midrib, as is com- 

 monly stated. These have a very pleasant taste and flavour, but 

 soon cover the roof of the mouth with a tenacious greenish crust, 

 which causes a sensation somewhat like that of the fat of a heart or 

 kidney. These leaflets or pinnce are quite membranaceous when young, 

 but in full-grown plants are fleshy, and at their middle a quarter of 

 an inch or more in thickness. Some of my specimens are of a fine 

 light-green colour, others mottled with rich brown, and some are of 

 a golden-yellow. Young specimens in general are of a uniform colour 

 throughout. 



Laminaria digitata. — This common plant is highly prized on 

 many parts of the Antrim coast as a manure. Every kind, indeed, 

 that is thrown up is used for the same purpose, and in some places it 

 is a common saying, that a sack of sea-wrack will produce a sack of 

 potatoes. After a fresh in- blowing wind, I have seen Cairnlough 

 Bay almost as populous as a fair, from the number of persons that had 

 collected from several miles around with horses and cars to carry off 

 the wrack. In calm or moderate weather the inhabitants of the coast 

 wade in amongst the rocks at low-water with reaping-hooks, and cut 

 away the F. vesiculosus and nodosus with the same object. They 

 often also go out in boats, and cut the tangle with crooked knives 

 fastened to the end of long poles, by which large quantities are ob- 

 tained. On parts of the shore which are too rugged for a wheeled 

 vehicle, the wrack is carried off in creels attached to the backs of 

 ponies, and where these cannot have access, both men and women 

 may be seen toiling from the shore with bagfuls on their backs, or 

 basketfuls on their shoulders. An almost universal opinion prevails, 

 not only at Cairnlough, but on every part of the coast, so far as I 

 have been informed, that a much larger quantity of wrack is thrown 

 ashore during rain than at other times. I inquired from many far- 

 mers, and from gentlemen living on the coast, respecting this, and 

 they all considered it a thing perfectly ascertained. I first heard this 

 opinion some years ago from a friend who lives at Donaghadee, in 

 the county of Down, who stated, that it was quite a common thing 

 for farmers in that neighbourhood to yoke their horses, and go to the 

 beach for wrack as soon as rainy weather came, though, allowing the 

 wind to be the same, they would not think of doing so if the weather 

 were dry, thinking that this trouble would be useless. I have had a 

 precisely similar account from a gentleman in the neighbourhood of 

 Carrickfergus ; but yet with all this evidence I have not been able, 



