Présentation de l'éditeur
As far as has been ascertained, the total number of species is about 9000 or 10,000. Many of them are microscopic, as theD esmids and Diatoms, others, asL essonia, and some of the larger Laminarise (oarweeds), are arborescent, covering the bed of the sea around the coast with a submarine forest ;while in the Pacific, off the northwestern shores of A merica, Nereocystis, a genus allied to Laminaria, has a stem over 300 feet in length, which, although not thicker than whipcord, is stout enough to moor a bladder, barrelshaped, six or seven feet long, and crowned with a tuft of fifty leaves or more, each from thirty to forty feet in length. This vegetable buoy is a favourite resting place of the sea otter ;and where the plant exists in any quantity, the surface of the sea is rendered impassable to boats. The stem of Macrocystis, which girds the globe in the southern temperate zone, is stated to extend sometimes to the enormous length of 1500 feet. It is no thicker than the finger anywhere, and the upper branches are as slender as pack-thread; but at the base of each leaf there is placed a buoy, in the shape of a vesicle filled with air. Although the worthlessness of Algae has been proverbial, as in the alga inutile of Horace and Virgil sprojecta vilior alga, they are not without importance in botanical economics. A dozen or more species found in theB ritish seas are made use of, raw or prepared in several ways, as food for man. Of these edible A lgoe, Dr. Harvey considers the two species of Porphyra, or laver, the most valuable.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
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Présentation de l'éditeur
Sea-weeds, Shells and Fossils is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1886. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.
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