A weary weed toss’d to and fro, Drearily drench’t in the ocean brine. —Cornelius G. Fenner, “Gulf-Weed.” Those who have spent any time along the sea shore will recall the familiar seaweeds washed upon the bank by the tide and have watched them idly waving to and fro in the water near the shore where the depth does not exceed several meters. There are perhaps no plants more beautiful from the purely artistic point of view. Many a visitor to a distant sea coast has collected and mounted the more beautiful and delicate ones as souvenirs to delight the eye of friends. The delicate coloring and manifold branchings are the characteristic of the more attractive species. Some are quite small, while others grow to enormous size. The so-called “sea lettuce” is of a bright grass green color, forming a large leaf like expansion. The Gulf weed, a species of Sargassum, is very plentiful in the gulf regions of the southern United States, Mexico and Central America. During heavy storms great quantities of this are torn loose from their fastenings and carried far out into the Atlantic where they form the Sargassa sea and impede ocean traffic. The sailors on the ships of Columbus encountered such a sea and revived their hopes of soon seeing land, as they rightfully conjectured that the sea weeds were washed from the shore. Sea weeds in general are variously employed. They are the sources of iodine and bromine. They are collected in large quantities and used as fertilizers. The Chinese and Japanese use some species very extensively as food. The stipes or stalks of Laminaria cloustoni are used in surgery. Sea weeds and other aquatic plants serve as a protection and food for a host of animals of the seas; especially fish, cray-fish, lobsters, etc. The smaller fish in trying to escape from his larger, ravenous enemy hides among these plants. Bryant, in Sella says: “Here were mighty groves Far down the ocean-valleys, and between Lay what might seem fair meadows, softly tinged With orange and with crimson. Here arose Tall stems, that, rooted in the depths below, Swing idly with the motion of the sea; And here were shrubberies in whose mazy screen, The creatures of the deep made haunt.”