/ 
38 BRITISH MARINE ALG. 
thrown out their long receptacles, and covering the rocks near low 
water mark in vast numbers. These little top-shaped plants gradually 
collapse on the upper surface and become plano-concave, extending 
into a perfect circle, and finally curling over a little at the margin. 
From the centre of this now cup-like disk, in the spring of the 
next season, two little mammille gradually arise, which rapidly grow 
out as described. The illustration represents the cup-like dise and 
the early condition of the lorea or seed vessels. These long strap- 
shaped seed-vessels, for such they really are, attain occasionally a 
length of 10ft. or 12ft, and within their soft inner substance numerous 
spherical receptacles are produced, which appear to the naked eye like 
little dark brown spots dotted about throughout the whole length of the 
thongs. Himanthalia, like some other species of Fucus, has a high 
northern range, being found in the Arctic sea, but they are more generally 
abundant in temperate waters; and, although the British species of Fucus 
are not numerous, yet, from the gregarious habits of most of them, they 
cover a larger extent of rocky shores than all the rest of our sea-weeds put 
together. 
The Laminariee, although of an inferior order in point of structure and 
fructification to the Fucacew, are of much larger dimensions. Several 
species, when fully grown, are above twelve feet in length, but when we 
come to the deep-sea species, the fronds are measured by fathoms, and 
not by feet. I have already described the great Nereocystis of the North 
Pacific, with its large air vessel, the favourite resting-place of the sea- 
otter. This, and several other ocean species, rival in size the giant palms 
of the tropics. 
The Laminarieew are mostly plants of deep water, the larger species 
rarely vegetating above low-water mark. On the British and American 
shores they are popularly known as “‘ oarweeds,”’ “‘ tangle and euvy,”’ “‘sea- 
colander,’ and ‘‘devil’s apron.’? All the plants of this order are 
inarticulate or unjointed, the spores being produced in cloudy patches, 
or covering the whole surface of the frond. The root consists of 
numerous clasping fibres, additional ones being thrown down from above 
the older ones as the plant increases in size, and so firmly do they grasp 
the substances on which they grow, that often in boisterous weather tufts 
of this species from 4ft. to 8ft. in length are cast ashore, attached to 
large stones many pounds in weight, which their strong holdfasts have 
enabled them to drag from deep water. The well-known species of the south 
and east coasts of England, Laminaria saccharina (Fig. 48), or the sugary 
Laminaria, in allusion to the sweet, though insipid flavour of its frond, is 
often found east ashore after storms; its long ribbon-like fronds being 
from 6ft. to 12ft. or more in length. When young, the colour of this plant 
is a pale green olive, but as it advances in growth, it gradually assumes 
the normal tint of its species, but varying occasionally from dark yellow 
to brown or brown olive. ‘The stem, which in early growth is very short, 
increases in length with the growth of the frond, and in perennial species 
