FOOTNOTES
[1]This name Kelp is applied to species of marine plants of the genus Macrocystis which grow profusely in the sea on the Pacific coast of the American continent. The species particularly alluded to as abounding on the coast of California is one of the most gigantic of plants, having been observed upwards of three hundred feet in length, and occurs in such immense and dense masses as to present formidable difficulties to the navigator. For this reason many localities of this extraordinary plant have been carefully marked in the charts containing the results of the Coast Survey now being made by order of the Government of the United States. All the recent travellers in California represent it as being cast on the shore in large quantities by the action of the sea, and it could probably be as readily applied to the production of Barilla (carbonate of soda) as any other marine species of the vegetable kingdom from which, in other countries, this important article of commerce is manufactured.
[2]Nearly the whole of the Zoological portion of this important work is omitted in the English edition (Quarto, London, 1843.)
[3]Dec. 1853.
[4]The works of this naturalist (who is Director of the Zoological Museum in Dresden) are in the highest degree important, and in fact indispensable to the ornithologist. In his great work, “The Complete Natural History” (Die Volstandigate Naturgeschichte, Dresden and Leipsic, now in the course of publication in parts), he has undertaken to give plates of all known species of birds, and has already published several thousand figures.