THE SEA-WEEDS AT HOME AND ABROAD. 291 
nuniber, and yet seemingly not in a capricious manner, in 
different tufts. Though thus inelegant and vulgar or 
common, they belong to a refined and delicately educated 
family, having in their circle some of the prettiest alge 
known in the American seas, of which the Venus’ Comb (P: 
pecten- Veneris) found parasitic on corals and shells at Key 
West and the Pine Islands, is a notable example ; and in- 
deed all require only to be magnified to show what they are. 
There are numerous species to be looked up on the various 
sea-weeds and marine objects on which they delight to grow. 
This almost gelatinous mass of dissolving threads ‘staining 
the paper with a deep empurpled or crimsoned blotch, is the 
Dasya elegans, more commonly met with to the south of 
Cape Cod; it is likewise a parasitic alga and grows in deep 
water; nor are other beautiful species unknown in distant 
regions. L2hodomela is worth looking for, being an elegant, 
much branched, filiform, cylindrical-stemmed alga, of which 
R. subfusca, gracilis, Rochei, etc., have been collected on the 
coast of Massachusetts. The several species belong to tem- 
perate zones. In the English manuals much is said of the 
beauty of the Lawrencea; in this country this alga is repre- 
sented by the Chondriopsis of J. Agardh, and some may be 
sought, of which C. Baileyana is really elegant and graceful, 
while its conceptacle, or seed-vessel, is of classic outline, mi- 
nute, yet not to be overlooked! Others similar might be al- 
luded to, but we must defer mention of them, unless we meet 
them in their coral groves in waters of a higher temperature. 
The broad-fronded rosy sea-weeds claim a passing tribute. 
Our beaches and shores, the resort of summer seekers for 
pleasure and profit, offer us the Delesseria with a genuine 
rosy-red, leaf-like; jagged edged, or else delicately branching 
membranous symmetrical frond, with a pereurrent midrib. 
The seed-vessels are to be looked for near the midrib, but 
definite spots containing another sort of seeds occupy the 
surface or portions of the frond besides. Several species are 
found both north and south, but by far the finest is the D. 
