THE SEA-WEEDS AT HOME AND ABROAD. 295 
and naturalist thus speaks: “The ocean hardly boasts of a 
more beautiful production; it is generally about the height 
of a man, very bushy and branched, each branch bearing a 
broad leaf at its extremity, which unfolds spirally ; a spiral 
border winds round the stem ; a number of rather long, nar- 
row perforations, arranged in a radiate form, give ilie. frond 
the appearanee of a cut fan; the margin is entire, its sub- 
stance coriaceous, but liable to be torn. No seeds have been 
detected. This fine fucus, or sea-weed, is plentiful around 
the whole island of Amaknak, clothing the rocky shore like 
a thick hedge, and forming at a little distance a very pleasing 
feature in the scenery." (Mertens as quoted by Professor 
Harvey.) Though destitute of this wondrous sea-leaf, our 
piles of seawrack can display something similar in the highly 
curious sea colander (Agarum Turneri), which has come 
ashore after strong winds and gales. Furnished with a short, 
compressed, coriaceous stem, widening and flattening as it 
approaches the frond, and clasping by its stout fibrous roots 
the rocks and stones, its dark olive green expanded leaf per- 
forated at short intervals with roundish holes, it is quite a re- 
spectable weed. The shores of Kamtschatka and the Pacific 
recognize others. Besides several kinds of the oar-weed of 
respectable dimensions, such as the Sweet or Sugar, the Long- 
shanked, the Fingered, with its frond deeply cleft into several 
strap-shaped segments, we have for noble sea-weeds Alaria 
esculenta, known, as articles of food, under the name of mur- 
lins among the peasantry of Scotland and Ireland, belongs 
to a small genus, inhabits the colder regions, and is recog- 
nizable by a branching root, stalked, membranous frond, 
with smaller fronds or leaflets springing from the stalk and 
below the main frond. A definite dark colored patch in the 
centre of these leaflets indicates the clusters of pear-shaped 
seed-vessels packed vertically among straight and simple 
threads. 
From these we come by easy transitions to some of the 
most marvellous vegetable productions on our globe, and 
