Botanical Miscellany (Volume 3)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: drical bladders, which, like enormous sea-serpents, flout on the surface of the water, and individually sweep between the little islands, rendering the channels impassable, even for boats. From the information that I collected from various Russians and Aleutians concerning its duration, this Fucus is annual. In autumn it is cast in great quantities on shore by the then prevalent storms, where it soon decays, and in spring not the least trace of it is to be seen. The Aleutians employ the stipes, which is said sometimes to be 45 fathoms long, for fishing-lines: I purchased one of them. I once saw the Kadiakensers, in Sitcha, make use of the cylinder as a siphon, for pumping the water out of their Beidarkas; an use to which it is well known that the F. buccinalis is often applied at the Cape of Good Hope. Owing to the moist climate of Sitcha, the drying of this sea-weed is attended with considerable difficulty. I hardly ever succeeded in preserving a tolerable specimen of the cylinder or bladder, though I bestowed much pains and labour on the operation, for this part generally dissolves completely, or if dried, the leaves then become brittle as glass, and fall to pieces with the slightest touch. The opening of the bladder and discharging the water which it uniformly contains, only hastens the process of decomposition: though the bladders of F.pyri- ferus, if similarly treated, always dried quickly and well. I have preserved some young specimens in spirits. The fructification of this Fucus consists in dark-coloured, more or less elongated spots, irregularly scattered in the substance of the leaves. In the Bay of Illulak I only saw it in one place, and never again afterwards. I was not able to find Fucus Menziesii at Norfolk Sound, though I repeatedly sought for it. Many of the ...