458 Composition of Seaweed and Use as Manure, [sept., 



THE COMPOSITION OF SEAWEED AND ITS 

 USE AS MANURE. 



Edward J. Russell, D.Sc. 



Kothamsted Experimental Station. 



All around the coasts of the British Isles and of other 

 countries in northern Europe seaweed has a high reputation 

 as manure. There is no record nor even any tradition to 

 show when it was first used, or how its value was discovered, 

 but it seems to be essentially a northern manure, and is not 

 included in the lists given by the Roman writers. It began 

 to be mentioned as soon as descriptions were written of the 

 husbandry of the coast districts; thus Camden in 1586 says 

 that in Cornwall the valleys are "of an indifferent glebe, 

 which with the Sea-weede or reit commonly called Orewood 

 and a certaine kind of fruitfull sea sand they make so ranke 

 and battle that it is incredible." Owen at about the same time 

 tells us that in South Wales "this kind of ore (i.e., seaweed) 

 they often gather and lay in great heaps, where it heteth and 

 rotteth, and will have a strong and loathsome smell ; when 

 being so rotten they cast it on the land, as they do their 

 muck, and thereof springeth good corn, especially barley " ; 

 and again, "they fetch it in sacks on horse backes, and carie 

 the same, three, four, or five miles, and cast it on the lande 

 which doth very much better the ground for corn and grass." 



In the Isle of Thanet, where several thousand cartloads of 

 seaweed may be thrown up by one tide and carried away by 

 the next, Boys writes in 1798 that farmers living at a distance 

 from the sea would hire small pieces of land near the shore [ 

 on which to lay the fresh weed as they got it, keeping it there 

 till it could conveniently be carted away. The old passage- 

 ways cut trench-like through the 50 or 60 feet of chalk cliff i 

 down to the shore are still used for carting seaweed, and 

 still retain their old Scandinavian name "gates." So im- | 

 portant was seaweed deemed in the Channel Islands that its 

 collection and distribution were regulated by law, so that 

 the inland parishes might have their proper share. In 1694 j 

 Falle writes : " The Winter Vraic being spread thin on the 

 green Turf, and afterwards buried in the furrows by the 

 Plough, 'tis incredible how with its,fat unctuous Substance it 



