
SEA-WEEDS. 229 
fully detached. from the leaf, and magnified five hundred 
diameters, will show a specimen of rare elegance, a sort of 
shell-like body with three or more lobes, and regularly made 
up of a great many, somewhat square cells. It is the Mapa- 
lidium phyllactidium of Kutzing, detected by me a few years 
ago, and till then new to our flora, but discovered first by 
~ Professor Allman in Dublin bay, Ireland. 
On the perpendicular faces of the larger rocks, and com- 
pletely covering the rounded and erratic ones near the 
beaches, and also on the stone-walls and piles of the wharves, 
grow the several Fuci, whose seeds are to be searched for 
late in the autumn and on the beginning of winter, lodged in 
rounded imbedded cells, and of much beauty. The Fuci have - 
a wide geographical distribution, growing very far towards 
the north pole, and known quite far southwards. According 
to Professor Harvey the deficiency of species is a very 
marked feature in our coasts, two only, the vesiculosus and 
nodosus, or the bladder and the knotted fuci occurring, and 
these quite limited in range. It were somewhat rash to 
differ from such high authority, yet it seems to me more 
than probable that some of the other European representa- 
tives, such as serratus, for instance, may be found ; and small 
forms which grow on the hard and compact gravel at high- 
Water mark, which always remind me of caniculatus: in con- 
firmation of which a few specimens of fuci, collected and 
hamed by Desor in 1850, near Boston, and presented me by 
Ry friend, Miss H. B. Stevenson, are now lying before me, 
indicating an agreement in the same direction. Rising and 
falling in the surf as it dashes against the rocks, these species 
‘eem instinct with sensitive life, and appear to shake them- 
selves in the cool water as if refreshed after partial desicca- 
tion and lassitude, while shoals of the smaller fishes and 
crustaceans dart in and out in security among their exube- 
rant tresses, 
To this order belongs the interesting Gulf-weed (Sargas- 
sum), one species of which floats in vast beds around the 

