Seaweeds and other marine plants, like eel-grass, are collected in great quantities by farmers in all parts of the world to be used as a fertilizer. Shell-mud, dead fish, and other marine products are also of high value as manure, on account of the large proportion of lime, carbon, and soda which they contain. Indeed, there is a kind of seaweed growing at great depths called the nullipore, which takes up so much lime from the water that its substance becomes almost like stone, so that the plant retains its shape and full size when dried. Some of these nullipores are beautifully fan-shaped, scarlet or pink, and are often seen in museums, marked _corallines_. [Illustration: SEAWEEDS. 1. _Laminaria digitata._ 2. _L. longicruris._] To return to the gathering of seaweeds by farmers, nowhere is it more customary than in some parts of New England. Thus the well-known Second Beach, just east of Newport, is in the fall of the year the scene of a vast activity in this direction. “It may easily happen,” we are told, “that the pilgrim to Whitehall, topping the hill on a brilliant autumn morning, shall come upon a scene in which quiet plays no part. The seaweed, that harvest which, ripening without labor, is neither bought nor sold, is setting inshore under the urgings of wind and tide, and scores of farmers have crowded to the spot to gather it. An artist could hardly wish a better subject for his pencil than one of these wild harvestings—the plunging horses, forced far out into the surf, their slow return, half swimming, half wading, dragging the heavily loaded rakes which leave behind them a long furrow of foam, the heaped-up kelp glistening in the sunshine, the oxen, yoked by fours, waiting for their load, the shouts of the men, the dash, the excitement, and beyond and above all, the wonderful blues and iridescent greens which are the peculiar property of Newport waters and the Newport sky.” Cattle and horses that are accustomed to rough pastures, like the Scotch and Irish moors, eat seaweed and thrive on it, especially as winter fodder, and from several species are derived dishes for our own tables. The Irish moss, or carrageen,—which is not a moss at all, but a seaweed,—is the most important of these, and grows on both sides of the northern Atlantic. In England the market supply comes chiefly from the western coast of Ireland, while Massachusetts Bay gives America all that is wanted, principally the red, coral-like _Chondrus crispus_. The little port of Scituate, Massachusetts, is the chief point of supply, where many thousands of pounds are gathered. In early June, two or three hundred men and women go to the rocks at low tide and pick off the small brown plants, each man getting about a barrel in one day’s work. When the tide rises, the people get into small boats and pull up the moss with rakes.