THE SEA-WEEDS AT HOME AND ABROAD. 219 
red-seeded alg: are usually the most popular because the pret- 
tiest ; but others, even the black or fuscous-seeded alge have 
many claims on our attention. I will venture, however, to 
set both these kinds aside for awhile, and speak first of the 
green-seeded alge, the Chlorosperme, as they are called in 
the books. 
In the rear of some beaches, like that known to the old 
folks about Marblehead, as Devereux’s beach, perhaps it has 
now another name, surely none more euphonious — may be 
seen large extended reaches of salt or brackish water, cov- 
ered with floating masses of a light-green tangled fibre, and 
which lies in flakes upon the tips of the growing grass, or 
east ashore to desiccate and fade in the bright sunshine. 
Lifting carefully a little on the end of a sharply-pointed 
stick we shall find a great many silky, glossy threads, each 
slender, sparingly branched with alternate and scattered 
branchlets somewhat spread apart; sometimes growing on 
one side, each joint several times longer than broad. "Within 
each joint look after a green granular mass which answers 
for seeds, and to do this you must have a pocket lens for 
your eye; at home a compound microscope would do better, 
and in this rapidly growing and widely extending Chloro- 
sperm you have taken your first lesson, perhaps, in studying 
the alge, having been introduced to the Conferva flavescens, 
and if possessed with farther curiosity you may learn of 
other Confervas of equal or surpassing evidence. The ex- 
treme lightness which these sheets of dead fibres have, 
renders them easily elevated into the higher strata of the 
air, whence they have been known to fall in violent showers 
far into the interior, spreading consternation by their pres- 
ence in such an unusual manner, and greatly frightening the 
superstitious and ignorant. Sometimes this substance has 
been called “meteoric paper," and I have seen in the micro- 
scopical cabinets of my acquaintances fragments of similar 
matter from very remote parts of the globe. This single 
species has been observed extensively in Europe and 
