IY. 
INTRODUCTION. 
35 
blown on by a stall-fed “ short-horn” that looks for vegetables of a higher 
order. 
To obtain such food for the high bred cow, the Algae must be applied in another 
way — namely, as manure. For this purpose they are very largely used in the 
British Islands, where “ sea-wrack” is carried many miles inland, and successfully 
applied in the raising of green crops. On the west coast of Ireland the refuse of 
the sea furnishes the poor man with the greater part of the manure on which he 
depends for raising his potatoes. All kinds of seaweed are indiscriminately applied ; 
but the larger kinds of Laminarias are preferred. As these rapidly decompose and 
melt into the ground, they should, in common with other kinds, be used fresh, and 
not suffered to lie long in the pit, where they soon lose their fertilizing properties. 
The crops of potatoes thus raised being generally abundant, but the quality rarely 
good, sea- wrack is more suitable to the coarser than to the finer varieties of the 
potato. It is, however, considered excellent for various green crops, and a good top 
dressing for grass land, and its use is by no means confined to the poorer districts. 
The employment of sea-wrack is limited only by the expense of conveying so bulky 
a material to a distance from the sea or a navigable river. 
Though the agricultural profits derived from the Algae are considerable, a still 
larger revenue was once obtained by burning the Fuci , and collecting their ashes 
as a source of carbonate of soda, a salt which exists abundantly in most of them. 
Fucus vesiculosus , nodosus and serratus , the three commonest European kinds, 
yielded, up to a recent period, a very considerable rental to the owners of tidal 
rocks on the bleakest and most barren islands of the north of Scotland, and on all 
similar rocky shores on the English and Irish coasts. A single proprietor (Lord 
Macdonald) is said to have derived £10,000 per annum, for several successive 
years, from the rent of his kelp shores ; and the collecting and preparation of the 
kelp afforded a profitable employment to many thousands of the inhabitants of 
Orkney, Shetland, and the Hebrides. 
During the last European war, when England was shut out from the markets 
from which a supply of soda was previously obtained, almost the whole of the 
alkali used by soap-boilers was derived from the kelp or sea-weed ashes collected in 
Scotland. The quantity annually made in favourable years, between 1790 and 
1800, amounted on the authority of Dr. Barry* to 3,000 tons, which then fetched 
from £8 to £10 sterling per ton ; but at a later period of the war rose from £18 
to £20. It is also stated by the same author that within the 80 years, from 1720 
to 1800, which succeeded the first introduction of the kelp trade, the enormous 
sum of £595,000 was realized by the proprietors of kelp shores and their tenants 
and labourers. 
Yet so great was the prejudice of the islanders against this lucrative trade, when 
first proposed to them, u and,” to quote Dr. Greville, “ so violent and unanimous 
was the resistance, that officers of justice were found necessary to protect the 
individuals employed in the work. Several trials were the consequences of these 
outrages. It was gravely pleaded in a court of law, ‘ that the suffocating smoke 
that issued from the kelp kilns would sicken or kill every species of fish on the 
* History of the Orkney Islands, p. 383 (as quoted by Greville, see Alg. Brit. Introd. p. xxi. et seq.) 
