.EATABLE WINGED RUCUS. 
of stone into the sea, with a view to promote and ex- 
tend their growth. 
For the preparation of kelp these plants are dried, by- 
exposure for some time to the sun and air. They are 
then burnt by degrees in a kelp furnace, which is 
generally a round hole dug in the earth. When the 
furnace is nearly filled with the remains of the burnt 
sea-weeds, 'the whole is briskly agitated with a rake or 
hook, till it is compacted, or becomes of a shining 
glutinous consistenjce, in appearance not unlike melted 
iron. It is then allowed to cool, and is afterwards 
placed in storehouses for exportation. In this state it 
is an impure kind of carbonat of soda. In the Orkney 
Islands every consideration is sacrificed to the making 
of kelp, nearly 3,000 tons of which are annually sent 
o market .and sold at Leith, Newcastle, and other 
places, at the rate of from seven to ten pounds per ton 
of twenty-one hundred weight. 
The inhabitants of Gothland boil this plant with coarse 
meal, as food for swine ; and the poorer classes of 
jScania thatch their cottages with it, and also employ it 
as fuel. In the Hebrides it is customary to dry cheese, 
without using any salt, by covering it with the ashes of 
the bladder fucus, which abound in saline particles. 
This and other sea-weeds serve as a winter food for 
cattle, which regularly frequent the shores for them at 
the ebb of the tide : they are also used as manure for 
land. 
A soapy liquor which is found in the bladders of this 
plant is sometimes externally applied as a medicine for 
dispersing scrofulous and scorbutic swellings, by simply 
bruising them in the hand and rubbing them on the 
parts affected. When this plant is calcined or burnt 
in the open air, a black and saline powder is produced, 
which, under the name of vegetable cetliiops, has been 
.recommended as a dentrifice, and for other uses. 
289. EATABLE WINGED FUCUS, or BLADDER- 
LOCKS (Fucus esculentus), is a simple, undivided, and 
