16 
THE SEAWEEDS 
dulse and lavers are looked on as special delicacies, the former eaten raw, 
the latter cooked as a spinach or made into laver bread. Ladies m Western 
Australia make jellies of Eucheuma, and ladies in Tasmania make jel ics 
of Gracilaria, jellies much appreciated at their tables. Carrageen or Irish 
Moss, Chondrus crispus has long been used as a medicinal food. 
Seaweeds contain proteid matter, starches and oils, minute quantities of 
iodine, and are rich in vitamins. The kelps are too tough for digestion, 
but many of the Green and Red seaweeds can supply nourishing material 
which can be prepared for the table and dressed as vegetables. In the 
cooking, however, the vitamins will be destroyed. Hence a method has 
been devised which will preserve the vitamins. The weeds are dried at a 
moderate temperature and then ground to a powder. This can be sprinkled 
on the food as we use salt or pepper. It is almost tasteless but will piovidt 
a valuable vitamin and iodine reinforcement. A diet so reinforced will 
act as a preventative from such diseases as goitre, rickets, scurvy, beri-beri, 
tooth-decay, &c. And as powder or dried weed such preventive can be 
brought to inland districts where such diseases are prevalent. \ ery much 
more use can be made of seaweeds as foods in our modern civilisation 
than has hitherto been the case. 
No seaweed is poisonous. 
Manure. — Seaweed spread on the land, rotted and dried by atmospheiic 
action, and then ploughed or dug in, forms a good manure to supply food 
for crops. This is taken advantage of by the cultivators near the sea 
where the various kelps, or coarse Brown seaweeds, grow in plenty along 
the shores. Our kelps are rich in potash, and the Laminariaceae contain 
also small amounts of iodine. For impoverished folk, as in Connemara, 
for whom artificial manures are out of the question, the seaweed furnishes 
an economical means of replenishing the soil. The kelps form a broad 
brown fringe along a great part of the coast of the West of Ireland, and 
the storms of the Atlantic pile the torn off weed in long high banks on 
the beaches. The men hunt the weed in their curraghs, and the women 
collect it in wicker baskets, and carry it to the little plots of cultivated 
ground. In Normandy the Varech harvest is a great season when the 
thrifty fisher and farm folk go out in boats to cut and collect the kelp. 
The early settlers in Western Australia made great use of the heaps of 
weed thrown up by the heavy winter storms. In fact in many parts of 
Australia there are available considerable, if erratic, heaps of unclaimed 
manure which can be utilised at the expense of collecting and transferring 
to the land to be manured. 
Agar-Agar, or Bengal Isinglass, is imported from Singapore and is 
obtained from various seaweeds in Malaya and Eastern Asia. The plants 
which yield it chiefly are Gelidium corneum, G. corniculatum, Eucheuma 
spinosum, and especially Gracilaria lichenoides. These being bleached 
and dried and treated in hot water form a jelly which sets, and can be 
hardened by drying into a solid gelatine-like substance. This is cut into 
