302 THE MANUFACTURE OP KELP. 



analysis, will afford a conviction to the contrary. There are many sea- 

 weeds, however, which contain little iodine, but are well worth working 

 for potash ; thus grass wrack contain 15 per cent, in the ash, and Rhodomela 

 pinastroides 16 per cent., and these have never been worked. The extrac- 

 * tion of chloride of potassium from sea-weed is not sufficiently thought of, 

 as it is now one of our principal sources of saltpetre, on which so much 

 depends in time of war ; this is now made very largely by the decom- 

 position of nitrate of soda by chloride of potassium. Considering, then, 

 the great value of seaweeds as a source of potash, and as the only available 

 source for that very valuable element iodine, it is not a question as to 

 whether they should or should not be worked, but it is an absolute com- 

 mercial necessity that the iodine and potash should be extracted from them 

 and the question is, what is the best method of doing it ? 



It is a remarkable fact that the principal commercial sources of ammonia 

 are carbonised plants, in the shape of coal ; and that these plants were mostly 

 cryptogamic, and very near the algse in the botanical scale ; the present 

 century has developed a source of unbounded national wealth in the former, 

 and I believe that a great future is open to the latter. We reckon a 

 country's riches not so much by its gold and silver as by the coal it is 

 enabled to produce and consume ; and although we do not now believe in 

 the transmutation of metals, and we have desisted from our ancestors fruit- 

 less searches for the philosopher's stone, the spirit of alchemy is still amongst 

 us, and it presides over the extraction of valuable products from cheap and 

 apparently useless materials. Seaweeds have been regarded in the latter 

 class, and these researches will I hope be the means of directing attention 

 to their intrinsic value. 



If I am not too sanguine in my expectations, a great reform will be 

 introduced into, and a largely increased income will be derived from, the 

 kelp-bearing districts of Scotland and Ireland, the social state of their 

 inhabitants will be greatly ameliorated ; and even in wealthy England 

 -' Algaa inutilis est," will be no longer a proverb. 



ON BALSAM SEEDS. 



BY THOMAS D. KOCK. 



New products, as a rule, meet with a very indifferent reception in the 

 English market, and the enterprise of travellers and foreign merchants in 

 developing the varied resources of the universe, is often but ill-requited. 

 Sometimes the fault lies in selecting materials which satisfy no present want 

 of commerce, but for which a demand has to be created ; and although 

 the product itself may be intrinsically valuable, and subsequently come 

 into general use, yet the process of establishing a new trade, amongst a 

 people with such strong prejudices as the English, is so slow, that the 

 original importer almost invariably suffers loss, and rarely derives any benefit 

 from his enterprise. Deficiency of information concerning the origin and 



