216 THE SEA-WEEDS AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
the most luxuriant pastures. This field of botanical enquiry 
is yet open, and many a desirable harvest can be reaped, from 
season to season, out of the treasures of the deep, and the 
yet undiscovered or little known species of New England 
attract the deserved attention of the casual visitor or of the 
sedulous student. 
Let then the season be summer, the warm days of June, 
when many people as naturally resort to ‘the seaside as if 
the custom were instinctive and migratory. To some the 
scenery is the same and familiar, and the cool air is the 
main thing to be realized ; to others, though familiar yet ever 
new, and to others every object, however minute, is novel. 
The very rocks and cliffs are different in looks, composition 
and general features ; the sand composed of curious minerals, 
tiny shells and comminuted fragments; the wild flowers 
wierd and unusual; the thick leaved and prickly seeded 
plants thriving within the spray’s reach ; the beach cumbered 
with productions of the sea— mineral, animal, vegetable — 
thrown in wild confusion. Who, for the first time, is not 
moved with wonder at these sea-weeds? Who would not wish 
to become better acquainted? And no wonder so many are 
gathered, floated out into shape, dried, pressed and carefully 
laid away, silent witnesses that beauty and utility are often 
combined where little dreamed of. The interest increases 
with each coming season; the practised eye soon learns to 
discriminate; the cultivated taste finds the most propitious 
time of the year for collecting, and such trifles, employed at 
first to while away an hour or two, are often found indis- 
pensable and auxiliary to the very enjoyment of life. 
. Suppose we start on a walk for some gravelly beach con- 
tiguous to some town or city, and removed from it by the 
interventions of wild pastures, rocky and almost desolate, 
or by some level, wide extended marsh. At any season of 
the year, when walking is practicable, the botanist who ac- 
companies you, can point out abundant objects of interest 
long before you come within sea range. The intervening 
