2 3 B natural history 
iflands of Scilly the fheep and black cattle feed upon fea-wrack, 
efpecially when the other paftures fail ; and this they do, eating 
the plant in its falteft ftate from the rock whereon it grows, when 
the ebbing tide has but juft left it. That horfes too will feed on 
it, with a little precaution, Plutarch p relates, viz. when Caffar 
followed Cato into Africa, his foldiers, for want of forage, were 
forced to give the Alga on the fea-fhore to their horfes, having nrft 
wafhed off the brackifhnefs by frefh water, and mixed it with a 
little herb called Dog’s-tooth. In the iflands of Scilly, of the Alga 
they make kelp, a kind of imperfed vitrification of the fait, oil, 
and earth of this plant burnt together : they fend it to Briftol to 
the glafs-manufadurers ; and in a fair dry fummer, this article has 
been worth five hundred pounds to the Iflands : but the moft ge- 
neral ufe is for manuring the land ; and there being fo much fea- 
fhore on the edges of Cornwall, this plant offers itfelf fo conveni- 
ently, and in fo many places after hard winds, that fcarce any 
induftrious farmer can want dreffmg for his land ■. 
sect. x. From the herbaceous, let us defcend to the ligneous or horny 
Ligneous fubmarines, of which our fhores (not having been fufficiently ex- 
fubmarines. ar£ t b oug ht to be deftitute ; but the warted fea-fan, Plate 
xxiv. Fig. i. is a fufficient inftance that fuch plants are natives of 
the Cornifh fhores, and are not to be rafhly pronounced of foreign 
growth. It grew upon Pednankarn rock, two miles fouth-eaft of 
Moufhole pier in Mount’s-Bay, in twenty-fix fathom of water, 
whence it was plucked off by Andrew Harvey of Newlyn, fifher- 
man, by his fifhing-hook, in the year 1750: it meafures fourteen 
inches wide by twelve high, and, as I am informed, has been found 
much larger in the fame bay. It is the warted fea-fan of Mr. Ellis 
Hift. of Corallines, Plate xxvn, N°. 1. the Keratophyton flabelli - 
forme cor t ice verrucofo obdiiclum \ 
The flabellum veneris has been found on the fhores of Mount’s 
Bay after a ftorm, but whether from a wrecked veftel, or torn 
off by the violence of the waves from fome rock in the Bay, is not 
to be aflerted pofitively \ that we have plants of the fame lig- 
neous fubftance, and the fame coralloid covering which incrufts all 
its branches, cannot be doubted. 
sect. xi. The ftony fubmarines are either corallines, (fometimes called 
Stony fub- Coralline moffesj coralloids, or corals. There is a great variety of 
Corallines, corallines on the Cornifh fhore, moft of which, at prefent known, 
the ingenious Mr. Ellis before-mentioned, F. R. S. has taken care 
p In Carfare. 
* Obfervations on Scilly Iflands. 
•i See before of manures, page 86. 
* Ray, 3 1 edit, page 32. 
to 
