II.
As one coming in a strange land for the first time, on a junction of many roads, finds himself bewildered, and hesitating in his choice which to take, being ignorant which leads to the fairest places, and not knowing what beauties he may miss by selecting the one or the other, so in displaying the attractions of sea-weeds for artistic purposes—a field where so little has been attempted—it is not easy to decide, where so many courses appear to be open. It is not the difficulty of a beginning, for the start has been made; nor of the end, for a precipitate retreat has happened to more than one illustrious character; and if these pages could prove as entertaining as the immortal Sam’s valentine, even “a sudden pull up” might only make the reader “wish there was more.” But the difficulty is in adopting that order of narration which shall be most attractive in securing for the neglected sea-weeds their due meed of recognition and reward.
In the former chapter are figured some of those prevalent species which no one could fail to find in a walk along the shore: in this, which is devoted to the olive weeds or true fuci, the illustrations are drawn chiefly from among others of those common forms which are accessible to everybody, about which there are no considerations of rarity, pains, or price, and which indeed are always to be had for the trouble of picking them up.
These Melanosperms are characterized by naturalists as plants of an olive green or brown colour, and as being in their fructification either monœcious or diœcious, that is, having the distinctive organs on the same or on different plants. They are propagated by spores, either developed externally, or singly, or in groups in proper conceptacles, each spore being enveloped in a pellucid skin called a perispore, and being in some cases simple, and in others ultimately dividing into two, four, or eight sporules. Antheridia—a term admitted as indicative only, and by courtesy in the case of algæ, the actual propriety of the term being still contested—appear in some; in others are transparent cells filled with orange-coloured vivacious corpuscles, possessed of free motion by means of vibratile cilia. The whole group is marine. If any take objection to the word “plants,” the botanist will tell them that algæ have a double respiration, like their higher sisters of the land,—that by day they absorb carbonic-acid gas, and give out the life-supporting oxygen, and that in the silent hours of the night they reverse the process, and emit carbonic-acid gas.
To point out their relations and concordances with terrestrial vegetation is, however, a very easy task; but not so is it to draw the line between animality and vegetation. Some authors, indeed, and those not despicable ones, have gone so far as to assert that the germs of some sea-weeds, in their first condition, are actually endowed with life. Be this as it may, no line has yet been drawn which separates either distinctly or decisively the animal from the plant; and, as Dr. Lindley truly observes, “whatever errors of observation may have occurred, those very errors, to say nothing of the true ones, show the extreme difficulty, not to say impossibility, of pointing out the exact frontier of either kingdom.” We commence our present division—and shall follow the like course with the others—with its higher forms, and, proceeding in descending order, shall in each conclude with those humble rudimentary forms in which the rigid divisions of classification are obliterated, and the only differences which can be assigned are, at best, but little more than arbitrary.
To me how welcome and how dear are the olive algals of the rocky shores! Born within sound of the surging waves, for ever singing “their unrhymed lyric lays”—from infancy to manhood living on the margin of the briny deep—how fresh and dear to me these much-neglected things! “What pleasant visions haunt me” of childish hopes and fears; and as again I seem to
“Gaze upon the sea,
All the old romantic legends,
All my dreams come back to me.”
And in Fancy’s realms my drooping thoughts pass on to those homeless wanderers over the face of the earth, for whom never more the scenes of their first homes will wear a charm—who, torn from all familiar ties, and tossed and buffeted on the sea of life, may perish unregarded in some far-distant land. The surging crests of the great ocean’s waves oft cast, to moulder on our shores, the weeds and plants of other climes. We have figured one of these fragments, which, after its long and boisterous wanderings from the Azores to the eastern shores of the new world, across the wide Atlantic to our own boreal coasts of the old, has lost but little of its beauty. In the days of old adventure the matted cords of this charming species stopped the famous Spaniard’s ships; and still the long and narrow floating isles of Gulf-weeds—shunned by the sailor—are the resting-places of myriads of crabs, and other hosts of ocean’s progenies hide and nestle in its watery bowers.
But charming as the Sargassum bacciferum is in its gracefulness, and attractive as it may be in its historic associations, naturalists would not, of course, admit either itself or its congener, the Sargassum vulgare, as a truly British kind, but would properly regard them as stray waifs from tropical climes. The generic name is a Latinisation of the term sargazo, given to the Gulf-weeds by the companions of Columbus, and will for ever preserve the memory of its first discoverer; while the ancient specific additamentum of natans, or swimming, was highly characteristic of the habits of the species.
Next in the ranks, and foremost of the really British weeds, stands the common, but elegant, Halidrys siliquosa, already figured at page 110, distinguished from all other fuci by the compound structure of its air-vessels—a character peculiar to it, and to the beautiful Fucus osmundaceus, of the western shores of North America. In the last the structure is slightly different, the vesicles being constricted at the joints like strings of beads. The air-vessels of the Halidrys siliquosa are those pea-pod-like expansions of the frond, divided into chambers, which seem almost to take the place of leaves in the engraving (p. 110).
Sargassum bacciferum, or Gulf-weed.
Intermediate between Halidrys and the true fuci is placed the genus Cystoceira. One of the most elegant of this charming genus is the heath-like species, Cystoceira ericoides. On the shores of the south of England especially, and over a very considerable geographical range, extending even to the north of Africa, it may be gathered at almost any period of the summer or autumn. Under the water it glows with prismatic colours, and as each twig waves to and fro, the hues vary as the light glances on its fronds; and while some “seem covered with sky-blue flowers, others remain dark.” In the air it presents only a glossy yellow, and in the herbarium all its enchanting beauties of colour are gone, and unless very great pains and skill have been exercised in the manipulation, it will have shrunk in drying, and turned black.
Magnified View of Receptacle and Vesicle at Apex of Branch of Cystoceira ericoides.
In passing, it will be as well to gather specimens of the rather stiff and cylindrical Pycnophycus tuberculatus, standing alone as it does sui generis.
Of the true fuci, at page 108 is already figured the knotted one, of which Scotch boys make whistles (Fucus nodosus), and that with the saw-like edges (Fucus serratus), p. 109; but the ordinary bladder-bearing sort, the Fucus vesiculosus, and the more translucent and bladderless or smooth kind, the Fucus ceranoides, and indeed the whole genus, though common in the extreme, have high claims to the attention of designers, not alone in the elegance of their outlines and the disposition of their fronds, but as being the very types and models of sea-weeds.
The Fucus vesiculosus was at one time, particularly in the Orkney Isles, regularly cropped for the manufacture of kelp, and it is also known to contain a valuable portion of the sweet principle called mannite. In the cold and inhospitable regions of the polar lands, where the thick snow has buried the scanty herbage of the fields, the rocks furnish in their meadows of fuci abundant fodder for the hungry kine, which regularly, at the retreat of the tide, come down to graze; and if these pages were not devoted to other arts than the culinary, one might not unentertainingly give a disquisition on edible sea-weeds, and on the various means by which they are made subservient to the luxuries or necessities of man.
The Icelanders, Greenlanders, the Chinese, and the East Indians have already made some progress in this department; and nearer home, the Chondrus crispus, “carrageen,” or Irish moss, figured at page 120, has long ago been placed on the table, in soup, jellies, and blanc-manges.
Or, if the natural history of the class were the object, one might with equal pleasure dwell on the marvellous exhibition of the strange animal-like motions of the troops of zoospores which issue from the thick yellow slime exuded from the ripe receptacles of the Fucus serratus—motions apparently so voluntary that it is difficult to consider them as concordant with mere vegetation.
Chondrus crispus.
I have already hinted at the capabilities of these weeds as suggestive models for the carver in wood. Now few modern structures are fitted up with more elegance than our first-class ships, and in them no one will contend there is not a great and appropriate field for the display of the ornamental or decorative capabilities of sea-weeds. Here they are at once appropriate and reminiscent of those shores the voyagers have left behind—speaking to them, whilst gliding over the sea, of those lands whence they had departed, and of those other lands which they are seeking. Around and beneath figure-heads, as scrolls upon the bows or stern, bordering the panels of the cabin, and modelled to suit the various machinery on deck, the designer might create a marine ornamentation as characteristic and as pleasing, and as elaborate, if he chose, as Corinthian skill developed from the tile-covered plant for the architecture of the land.
In bronze or in iron, indeed in all dark metal-work, the fuci could not fail to be elegant objects, and rich in their grouping and in the effects produced. In many of those objects, too, which the gilder prepares, the cockle-shells, or cockle-like scrolls and cups so prominently displayed might be as elegantly and more appropriately supported by well-devised groups of algæ than by lilies, fleurs-de-lys, or traceries of meaningless design.
One very pretty diminutive species of Fucus (F. canaliculatus) grows on the very edge of the tide, and often where the waves wet the rocks only with their spray. The chief crop grows certainly above the level of half-tide, and these plants show a preference for droughty situations; not unfrequently in the hot days of the summer we find them quite crisp and dry, but on the return of the tide they again absorb the aqueous fluid, and recover life and flexibility. So sea-weeds which have long been shrivelled up in the house will recover in appearance all their freshness and verdancy on being merely immersed in a glass of salt or spring water; and the virtues of the former are now brought from the sea into our homes in the form of Tidman’s Crystals. I make this allusion because it is important that the artist, living perhaps in some inland town or city, should know that the natural models he may bring from the seaside on his holiday trip may be in reality, though not apparently, usefully retained for future studies. Many of the more leathery kinds will submit to several resuscitations of this nature, although, as might be expected, a deterioration and loss of colour, more or less, take place in each successive instance. The ordinary method of preserving sea-weeds for natural-history purposes is, as is familiarly known, to press them between folds of linen and blotting-paper on to stout drawing-paper, to which by their glutinous substance they firmly adhere, forming, under the skilfulness of the manipulator, the most exquisite natural pictures. In all these, however, the very act of compression, and the spreading out of the object on a flat surface, gives an unnatural aspect, very different from their free condition. It may be well, therefore, to state that in some few experiments I have made I have found that pure glycerine will preserve even the more pulpy and plump sorts—if I may use that expressive adjective—without even the slightest change for at least considerable periods. Some of my specimens have been kept in glycerine for more than eight months, and are as fresh in substance and in colour as when they were first collected. Choice samples seem thus capable of being indefinitely preserved in proper glass or earthen vessels for use at any time by the designer.
In a visit to the art-museums at South Kensington I observed two instances of the introduction of sea-weed: one in Mr. H. Weekes’s noble statue of a “Young Naturalist,” where, though sparingly made use of, they can but be regarded as successful innovations; the other in the collection of imitation Majolica ware, where a large vase has in relief some fronds of the Fucus serratus, which, from their unnaturally bright green and the want of strict attention to the natural model, are not so attractive as could have been desired. That sea-weeds, both painted or impressed upon china and earthenware, are capable of producing fine results, can scarcely be doubted; and although it cannot be written of me, as it was of an eminent statesman,—
“China’s the passion of his soul—
A cup, a plate, a dish, a bowl,
Can kindle wishes in his breast,
Inflame with joy, or break his rest,”—
I shall not willingly give up the potter’s art as intractable to my purpose.
The genus Desmarestia, which follows the fuci in natural order, offers some neat patterns for the painting of pottery and china ware, especially in the long oval fronds of the Desmarestia ligulata, a microscopic section of which is given at page 103. Its branching fronds, so leaf-like in their development, and yet so unleaf-like in reality, tempted me to figure a single branch of one of these plants, as an example of its peculiar characters, which, in their pale olive-green and purple hues, could scarcely fail of showing to advantage on the white translucent ground of aluminous materials. We have plates of a particularly small size dedicated to the curdled produce of the dairy—in plain English, we have
Portion of Desmarestia ligulata.
cheese-plates, we have soup-tureens and vegetable-dishes, meat-plates and dessert-plates; and why might we not have articles appropriated to the service of fish, and decorated with sea-weeds? I have frequently seen, in drying these objects, their forms impressed through the thick blotting-paper, and forming very beautiful tracery in low relief on the opposite side. Such impressions have always suggested the idea of a similarly simple, chaste, and elegant ornamentation of the plainer and commoner wares. The impressions left by the Chondrus crispus, Dictyota dichotoma, and other flat and interlacing forms, are most admirable for such a process. Simple accidents may often lead to unexpected results; and Grecian legends even attribute the discovery of modelling in relief to the tracing upon the wall, by a potter’s daughter, of the shadow of her departing lover’s face, which her father modelled afterwards in clay.
Root of Laminaria.
Passing by the genera Arthrocladia, Sporochnus, and Carpomitra, which all, in a greater or lesser degree, offer pleasing running patterns for the painting of porcelain or earthenware, and of flat surfaces in general, we come to the noble family of the Laminariæ, so well and ordinarily known under the names of sea-girdles and tangle. The size and expanse of the fronds of the various species of Laminariæ exposed, in the bleak and unprotected situations in which they grow, to the full fury of the waves, are provided for in their leathery toughness, the rope-like stem, and the numerous attaching discs of their branching roots. The root of the sea-weed differs very materially from the root of a plant: through it no nutritious sustenance is conveyed to the algal; it draws nothing from the soil; it is furnished with no organs; it is merely an adhesive holdfast, similar in principle to the sucker by which street-boys lift bricks and stones; it sends down no ramifying fibres into crevices of the rocks, but merely adheres to the surface. How far their peculiar characters could be elegantly made use of for the handles of vases, covers, lids, and other objects and parts of articles which require to be lifted or raised, must remain to be developed by the practical designer and manufacturer.
The mussels and shell-fish which attach themselves to the firm rootlets of the tangle, or which spin together or nestle in the meandering fronds of the smaller kinds, often produce groupings worthy of much admiration, and which would form material aids in the elaboration of practical patterns.
As there is much difficulty in expressing in a greatly reduced drawing a long and narrow form like that of the common tangle, I have contented myself with giving a figure of one of the roots, to show how applicable they are for art-purposes.
The North American and Kamtschatkan species—the Laminaria longicrucis—has a frond as large as a table-cloth, and a stem of proportionate length. The English species attain very frequently to six or eight feet, although in their native habitats they may be gathered of every size, and in every stage of growth; and to reduce such giants to the scale of a few inches would give no idea of their grandeur or beauty.
Of those immensely long and slender sea-weeds, placed by algologists in a distinct genus, with the expressive name of Chorda, little use, I think, can be made in the way of design. The mere collector has to wind them assiduously into a coil in his herbarium; and in their native element the only purpose they seem to serve is to stop the passage of boats, or to drown unfortunate swimmers by entanglement about their legs; for, although often thirty or forty feet in length even on British shores, and not thicker at their base than a whipcord, they are extremely tough and tenacious.
Dictyota atomaria.
The case is very different with the beautiful Dictyotaccæ, in which family is included the splendid Padina pavonia, with hues nearly as bright and as rich as the “eye-spots” on the tail of the glorious bird from which its specific name is taken. Such a marine beauty was not likely to escape the attention of even early naturalists, and we accordingly find it mentioned in the writings of Bauchin and others. Ellis, although he has no business with it, cannot resist the temptation to figure it in his famous book on Corallines.
In the genus Cutleria we are presented with some attractive novelties, but the typical genus Dictyota merits special attention.
If the number and variety of names by which an algal was known had any connection with its charms or its rarity, one
Stilophora rhizodes.
Section of a Sorus of Stilophora rhizodes.
member at least of the characteristic group, the Dictyota atomaria ought to be—as it really is—both rare and beautiful. The ancient nomen triviale of Phasiana expresses well, in its allusion to the plumage of that handsome bird, the barred and zigzag markings caused by the scattering in the substance of the frond—almost as one would cast grains of sand or seeds by the hand—of the dark-coloured spores or germs. The whole plant, too, exhibits those most delicate gradations of the primitive hue which are not the least remarkable characteristic of all sea-weeds. And in what are our designers more deficient—especially those employed in the decoration of our houses—than in simple and delicate contrasts, or more especially in those almost insensible gradations of colours which are so admirable in their effect, and which are so invariably presented to us alike in the sombre olive and in the bright greens and reds of the sea-weeds? We have no power to express these natural gradations in our woodcuts, but there is certainly much in this way worthy of patient study. In this large and extensive family there are yet more instances of how various sections and magnificent portions may possess artistic value. The section of a sorus of Stilophora rhizodes seems, for example, so like the representation of a fragment of jewellery, that it cannot fail to excite wonder that a source so prolific should have been neglected by our workers in gold and silver, and our setters of pearls and precious stones.
The Mesogloia vermicularis, one of the gelatinous Chordariaceæ, is an ugly weed, but the filaments of the fronds are worthy, notwithstanding, of being placed under the power of the microscope and viewed by an artist.
Portion of Filaments, Axial and Peripherical, of Mesogloia vermicularis.
So, too, with the hollow cottony Leathesia, looking like a macerated walnut tufting the surface of the rock: only peer into it with microscopic vision, and a forest of crystal fibres, composed of divided cells, the lower ones long and slender, the upper shorter, and supporting little hyaline half-moons on their cusps, springs into existence. The tiny tufts of the Elachista and Myrionema abound in bead-chain fibres, while the genera Cladostephus and Sphacelaria offer more visible patterns of a kind at once unleaf-like and novel. The Sphacelaria plumosa, so wiry and feathery, resembles those curious members of the animal kingdom, the Sertulariæ, as which it is almost as rigid and as elegant; while the small tufts of the rare Sphacelaria ramosa are again charming microscopic objects.
The family Ectocarpaceæ contains a fund of marvellous ideas. One more genus of British olive weeds alone remains to be mentioned, consisting of two little parasitic species not uncommon on the fronds of Chorda lomentaria; but though curious and singular in construction, they offer nothing so tempting as many of those we have been compelled to pass over in silence.
Cladostephus verticillatus.
Portion of a branch. One of the ramuli.
For the purpose of study, the Melanosperms offer a never-failing supply, always accessible at low water; but should opportunity arise of acquiring a knowledge of the Rhodosperms, with their fairy forms and brilliant hues, it should not be neglected, for these deep-water algals seldom reach us but in broken plants washed ashore; and dried specimens, flattened and faded, cease to be models for study. As to the Chlorosperms, the Ulvæ are full of grace and beauty, and in the south of England they are served at table as a relish to roast meat, under the title of laver, and which is now sold in many London shops. The Ulva linza, figured at p. 107, is a good type of the graceful outline of this elegant family of sea-weeds.
Portion of Sphacelaria plumosa.
Oft beneath the warm and brilliant rays of summer’s sun, in shallow skiff, I have glided on the calm and polished surface of the sea—the mirror of the glowing sky and heavens beyond—over the dark forests of tangle waving in the tide, and plucked the pellucid limpets browsing on their stems; and, peering down into the rugged dells below, have seen the star-fish crawl with sucker-arms along the rocks, where whelks drill holes in shells of stone-clad molluscs, to feed upon their soft and luscious flesh; where sea-anemones, with outspread tentacles, make gardens of living flowers; and awkward crabs peep out from darksome nooks at glittering fish, then scramble sidelong back again into their holes.
In winter, by the raging waves—when skaters swift o’er slippery ice with rapid pace were gliding; when ears were tingling with the biting cold, and tender people roasting over blazing fires—I have paced along the congealed sands to see the shell-fish frozen hard and fast, glued to the rocks; and sea-weeds, crisp and rigid, recover life and elasticity in the flowing tide.
In time of spring I have hunted over the slippery meadows of our shores for the instinct-led travellers from the deep, coming to the shallow tidal zone to propagate their tribes. And in the golden season I have watched the sportive play, in rocky pools o’ershadowed by these graceful weeds, of iridescent annelide and cilia-paddled beroe—have tracked the skipping shrimps along the silvery sands, or have patiently followed the Patella vulgaris in its solemn march to graze upon the verdant ulvæ, and again returning at the change of tide to adjust its conical house with stately nicety on its proper site.