The moss gathered each day is taken to the beach, where a gravelly space has been prepared, and is spread out to lie bleaching during all of the next day, when it is taken up, washed in tubs, and again spread out. The washing and drying in the sun continue for seven days, by which time it has bleached to a yellowish white. In cookery, jellies, _blanc mange_, and various methods of boiling in milk and mixing in soups are used to make it palatable. Besides being of value for food, carrageen serves to make sizing used by paper-makers, cloth-printers, hatters, and so on, to clarify beer in the brewery vats, as a medicine, and to make bandoline for stiffening the hair. Other species beside the Irish moss serve as food in Europe, generally in a raw state, often proving the only salty relish which the Irish peasant has to eat with his potatoes. One of these is the _dulse_ of the Scotch (the _dillisk_ of Ireland), which also abounds in the Mediterranean, and is there made into a soup. The natives of the South Sea Islands eat algæ, which are extraordinarily abundant and varied in Oriental latitudes; and the poor among the Japanese and in the interior of China, where the weed is sent dried, prize it especially, because it has a sea flavor and saves salt, which with them is a costly luxury. These people mix it with vegetables and other materials, to form thick, delicious soups and dressings. A peculiarly bad-smelling sauce, prepared from seaweed, is among the exports China sends to Europe as a condiment. Along the shores from Japan to Sumatra grows an alga which the natives of those coasts dry and keep as long as they please. When the substance is wanted they steep some of the dried pieces in hot water, where the weed dissolves, and then, having been taken off the fire, stiffens into a glue which is said to be the strongest cement in the world. A kind of false isinglass, also, is a product of the Eastern seaweeds, and it not only enters into the pastry and confectionery of Chinese bakers, but serves to varnish and glue thin paper and to stiffen the light transparent gauzes of fine silk used in making Oriental screens, fans, hangings, etc., so that painters can decorate them. With a poorer quality the bamboo stretchers of paper umbrellas, lanterns, and various toys are smeared to give them hard and polished surfaces. Seaweed has also been used in the manufacture of paper, and its complete success in this branch of industry is as yet hindered only by the difficulty of perfect bleaching. Certain species of it are utilized in enormous quantities by upholsterers as stuffing for sofas, chairs, and mattresses; in Japan it is formed into a substitute for window-glass; ornaments and small articles of use, like knife-handles, are made by several nations out of large dried seaweeds; and, finally, albums of preserved fronds are one of the prettiest things to be found in a naturalist’s cabinet.