in spite of the obstacles in correctly addressing them by their correct names, attract the attention of the most superficial. They are not difficult to find, and the same efforts to secure other and more specious kinds will insure many of these. The Melanosperms, black or fuscous seeded sea-weeds, less comely and attractive but by far more useful to savage and civilized man alike, remain for a cursory glance at least. Although our species are of only a respectable size when compared with foreign kinds, yet they assist so much in producing the effect we witness, wherever the ocean impinges on the land, we can illy spare them. Investing rock and wood structures alike, if built in places subject to the variations of the tides, they bear exposure of a few hours to the dry atmosphere or scorching sunshine, and revive as the cooled waters return to cover them, forming safe retreats to fishes, mollusks and other marine creatures, and affording the most nutritious dressings by way of manure to the exhausted fields. The variety of forms which they present has caused them to be comprised in several families with subdivisions arranged in such a way that they can be more readily studied, and those will claim our notice. About our shores the most abundant sea-weed of this kind is the fucus, of which there are two or three species and several varieties; or according to Professor Harvey five species on the American and seven species on the European shores, and one allied to F. nodosus, found at the Cape of Good Hope. They are usually known as kelp weed, rock weed, etc. Their seeds are lodged in tubercles filled with mucus, and they are discharged through the small pores; the hollow vesicles by which they are buoyed up in the water are not the seed-vessels but air bladders. A section of one of these seed tubercles, under the microscope, affords an instructive and pleasing sight. The Halidrys siliquosa might be readily taken for a narrow fronded fucus, but the air vessels are singularly divided transversely by numerous diaphragms extremely thin and membranous. It is usually found in shallow pools, but where the plant is never left to even temporarily become dry. Though very common on the Atlantic shores of Europe it does not seem to have been recognized here as growing on this side of the ocean. The Cystoseira, too, is only recognized as American in a California species though several are known to the British waters, and the Phyllospora Menziesii, detected by Menzies himself when with Vancouver, has elsewhere as yet only occurred in the deeper soundings of the California coast. In this plant we see the same globular air vessels we have noticed in the fuci. To this family belong also the gulf weeds, Sargassum, a vast genus and of which some species extend as near as Nantucket and Providence. One of them, the tropical Sca-grape (S. bacciferum), is seen floating in masses in the gulf stream, and is a familiar object. Kützing gives us a list of one hundred and three distinct species known over the globe! An excessively branched and bushy mass of dark brown fibres, covered with short harmless prickles, and sometimes growing several feet in length, often presents itself on the sandy beaches, evidently torn from the bottom of deep water. This is Desmarestia aculeata, so variable in appearance at different stages of growth as to have led good botanists astray. When young, this otherwise stiff, bristly weed is clothed with the most delicate pencils of finely divided filaments, of a beautiful green color, a condition worth seeking. Its mode of bearing seeds is unknown. Another natural order of the Melanosperms, comprising a great variety of kinds, is the Laminariaceæ, among which— from a simple cylindrical threadlike frond of the diameter of a whip-cord, and often twenty, thirty or forty feet in length, tapering at the extremity, and fixed at the base by a disk (Chorda filum) to a frond of broad dimensions, and supported by a long stalk (Laminaria or oar-weed) — we find a series of modified forms in species found in our waters. Of the sea leaf (Thallasiophyllum), one of this order, a writer and naturalist thus speaks: "The ocean hardly boasts of a more beautiful production; it is generally about the height of a man, very bushy and branched, each branch bearing a broad leaf at its extremity, which unfolds spirally; a spiral border winds round the stem; a number of rather long, narrow perforations, arranged in a radiate form, give the frond the appearance of a cut fan; the margin is entire, its substance coriaceous, but liable to be torn. No seeds have been detected. This fine fucus, or sea-weed, is plentiful around the whole island of Amaknak, clothing the rocky shore like a thick hedge, and forming at a little distance a very pleasing feature in the scenery." (Mertens as quoted by Professor Harvey.) Though destitute of this wondrous sea-leaf, our piles of seawrack can display something similar in the highly curious sea colander (Agarum Turneri), which has come ashore after strong winds and gales. Furnished with a short, compressed, coriaceous stem, widening and flattening as it approaches the frond, and clasping by its stout fibrous roots the rocks and stones, its dark olive green expanded leaf perforated at short intervals with roundish holes, it is quite a respectable weed. The shores of Kamtschatka and the Pacific recognize others. Besides several kinds of the oar-weed of respectable dimensions, such as the Sweet or Sugar, the Longshanked, the Fingered, with its frond deeply cleft into several strap-shaped segments, we have for noble sea-weeds Alaria esculenta, known, as articles of food, under the name of murlins among the peasantry of Scotland and Ireland, belongs to a small genus, inhabits the colder regions, and is recognizable by a branching root, stalked, membranous frond, with smaller fronds or leaflets springing from the stalk and below the main frond. A definite dark colored patch in the centre of these leaflets indicates the clusters of pear-shaped seed-vessels packed vertically among straight and simple threads. From these we come by easy transitions to some of the most marvellous vegetable productions on our globe, and algæ, or sea-weeds, too. How insignificant appear our kelpweeds in comparison with the Lessonia of the Antarctic Zone, trees with forking and branching trunks covered with crimson brown, sinuated edged, and jagged-toothed leaves, or with blackish opaque foliage and twisted flexuous trunks, growing like submarine forests; or with the Nereocystis of the Aleutian islands, whose stem, never thicker than a packthread, extends to the length of forty fathoms or more, and expands at the summit into an inflated cylinder from which issues a leaf, which gradually grows wider near its top; not singly, not here and there a plant but areas of great extent covered with innumerable plants; or with the Macrocystis whose slender stem and numerous leaves are buoyed up by their expanded and swollen base, the stem so long that fifteen hundred feet has been reported by observers as within the limits of belief. These several kinds of expanded fronds are employed as utensils among savage people, while the trunks of many of these gigantic algae drifting on desert shores have been mistaken and gathered for fuel, supposed to be actual wood. The structural arrangement of the cellular tissue on a number of the Melanosperms, giving to their fronds a peculiarly netted appearance when viewed through a magnifying glass, suggests a natural order, called Dictyotida, which signifies like a net. Externally there is quite a variety among these sea-weeds, and of them we may search for Punctaria in two species, both parasitic on other and larger sea-weeds about Boston Harbor, or even Asperococcus with an inflated frond, while the others delight in a flattened one. The seeds may be found in the minute dot-like clusters scattered over the surface of the plants. To this order belong the curious Padina pavonia and its allied Zonaria lobata, bearing no inapt resemblance to those richly zoned and velvetty fungi which grow out of old dead tree-trunks; but both these lovely algæ are tropical and belong to our most southern states. The rest of the Melanosperms are either parasitic and minute, and to be gathered either accidentally or else though strange and unusual in exterior, so infrequently that they hardly claim our present attention. In the structure of their seed-vessels and seeds they are objects of curious interest and beauty, but require a quick eye to detect the condition favorable to secure specimens, which when collected, must be submitted to the microscope to satisfy the enquirer. If our excursion and lesson has convinced us that in the distribution of plants, the ocean, which to many, shuts out the chance of minute observation, forms no exception to the law of vegetation; each part of its vast bosom bearing, like the earth, its appropriate flowers, plants and fruits, a day or two among the sea-weeds will be well employed. FOOT-NOTES FROM A PAGE OF SAND. IF those whom fashion and the weather drive from city follies and vices to the vices and follies of the seaside; who live in hotels and carriages and fancy the society of their kind the only sort desirable or possible,—if such read at all by the sea shore, it is not from the broadest and most eloquent page before them. With eyes to see, blind; deaf, with ears to hear; to them, a blank, a void, beyond the titillation of social scandal. Others go out of doors afoot, looking and listening; in every object by their pathway a familiar thing; with every vibration of the air, a well known voice; with every odour a reminiscence. Alone by the sea? There is no solitude-no escape for the naturalist, even though in a weak moment he wish it, from a multitude-no disentangling of self from the web of animate creatures of which he is one slender thread. The sea, we know, is teeming with life-full of shapes |