COLLECTING SEA-WEEDS
Every child ought to be familiar with that musical poem of Percival's beginning:
"Deep in the sea is a coral grove,
Where the purple mullet and goldfish rove."
And then when the child grows bigger he should have an opportunity to go out in a glass-bottomed boat, at Santa Catalina Island or elsewhere, and see for himself that those "yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean," "bending like corn on the upland lea," are not pictures from a poet's dream, but beautiful realities.
Sea-weeds are exquisite things and few people can resist the temptation to collect them when spending a vacation at the beach. When going on a collecting trip for these it is well to take a net and two pails, one small enough to hold the smaller things and carried inside the larger. A heavy knife may be useful, too. The best time is after the spring-tides, because at the lowest ebb of the water one may find forms of great beauty and brighter colours than elsewhere. The rocks, the rubbish left by the tide, the pools, the piles, the sea-wall, the surface of the waves themselves, are all good places to look for sea-weeds. They are fewer on sandy beaches than elsewhere. They vary in size from great, coarse, leathery rock-weeds to those so delicate as hardly to be seen at all.
Sea-weeds are real plants, belonging to that great group of non-flowering plants mentioned before. They are called algæ. They do not have true stems and leaves, neither do they feed by means of roots. Many of them are so shaped that they appear to have stems, roots, and leaves, but as these parts do not do the work of true stems, roots, and leaves they are not classed as such. The root-like parts of a sea weed are usually simply hold-fasts, which anchor the plant to the rocks. Algæ which live in sea-water get their nourishment from the water which washes their entire surface.
When collecting algæ, every specimen which is intended for immediate mounting should be kept continuously in sea-water. This is what the pails are for. Every part of the plant should be taken, as the attachment to the rocks is as valuable as the rest. The knife is useful here, or a staff with a metal point, for scraping the weeds off the rocks.
The natural element of the sea plant is sea-water. Do not put your specimens into fresh water even to wash or rinse them, as they will lose some of their beauty. Unless dried soon after gathering they will decay and fade. In collecting, try and get plants of various sizes even though they look alike. The larger ones may be in the fruiting stage. Do your mounting out of doors if possible, where you can have all the basins of sea-water you want and need not be careful about spilling.
If your collection of sea weeds is for a regular herbarium you should by all means have mounting paper of the standard size and quality; heavy white, unruled paper, of a quality which will stand wetting without being spoiled, eleven and one half by sixteen and one fourth inches. If you are merely making a few souvenirs of your summer at the shore, your own taste is the only thing to be considered. You will require genus covers, labels, etc., just as for flowering plants. For the work of mounting you will want plenty of driers, some pieces of muslin the same size, sheets of standard size mounting paper as described above, a heavy needle fitted into a wooden handle, a pair of forceps, scissors, two smooth boards, and weights. For complete enjoyment of the work you will surely have a little magnifying glass, for your pressed specimens will never be as beautiful as the fresh ones.
Sea weed mounted on paper of standard size
With several shallow dishes of sea-water within easy reach of your hands, and your pails of specimens floating in sea-water, you are ready to begin. Select your first specimen and lift it with care from the water. Dip it up and down gently in clean water. Every bit of matter that does not belong strictly to that plant must come off, and all the sand or other dirt. Let it spread out naturally in the water and with your scissors prune it to suit your purpose. Some grow in such a bunch that they will not show well on the paper, others may have to be trimmed to get them onto the page. Do not, of course, trim them down to look alike but preserve their peculiarities and characteristics. The great charm in a collection of this kind is in its variety. When the plant is absolutely clean, float it in a dish of clean water. This last dish should be a broad one for now you are to slip your sheet of mounting paper right into the water and get the plant onto it, floating it out in a natural attitude. This takes a knack, you may be sure, but the knack can be acquired with practice. If you can provide yourself with a pane of glass to lay the sheet upon when you take it from the water you will have the best conditions. Some people get along very well with a shallow plate. Some of the delicate parts will be certain to cling together as you lift them out of the water, but you can remedy that by dipping a few drops of water onto them and with your needle you can arrange them as you wish. Take your time. This is not a job for a person in a hurried mood. Examine and admire each piece as you work at it. Make it yours for all time, although you may sell it the following day and never see it again. Lay one of your driers on the lower board, put a mounted specimen all wet as it is, on this, then spread over the sheet a piece of muslin, lay on another drier, mount another sea-weed, cover it with cloth and so on you may build up your pile. Top it with a drier, put on the second board, and your weight, of ten pounds or so. Coarse, thick algæ should not be pressed in the same pile with the fine ones as they would make the pressure uneven. Blotters and cloths must be changed every day at first, dried in the sun to be ready for the next day. After two or three days the cloths may be taken off, and the plants left in press at least a week longer, changing driers every day. If you can set aside a regular time each day for this job, it is not so likely to be forgotten. Moulding specimens are very disappointing.
After one has made a little collection of sea-weeds all the stories about the wonders of the deep will take on a reality. You will want to read all you can find about the Sargasso Sea, which sounds like a fairy story. Maybe you have a specimen of this sea-weed in your collection, maybe you have been fortunate enough to sail through that "vast acreage of vegetation as large as the continent of Europe, lying southwest of the Azores!" Do you wonder that the first navigators, sailing uncharted seas, were alarmed by this vast expanse and thought of course there were concealed shallows beneath the feathery fronds of this gulf weed? You must read, too, of some of the giants of the sea-weed tribe; the "devil's apron," the "sea-otter's cabbage," with its air-vessel as big as a hogshead, and its stalk a slender cord hundreds of feet in length. These are all algæ, and so are the microscopic plants which produce that wonderful phosphorescence on the surface of the ocean. There are still unsolved mysteries about these plants and there is always a chance that the boys and girls who collect sea-weeds to-day on the beach may in the years to come read some of the secrets now hidden from all eyes. It is well worth while to keep such a big thought in mind even while doing the simple and easy work of mounting specimens.