Chapters on the Common Things of the Sea-side

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Preface

The main object of this little book is to enable the reader, unacquainted with Natural History, to recognise some of the different objects frequent on our shores. There is not one of them all, but has some interesting circumstance connected with it, familiar enough to the man of science, but never suspected by those who have not had opportunity or inclination to study them. Could we trace the mental history of our great naturalists, we should find that many who have devoted their Uves to the pursuits of science, had at first their attention directed to it, like Linnaeus, by listening to a conversation, or, like Sir Joseph Banks, by musing, in a leisure moment, on the beauty of a flower ; and thus the reading of a little volume like this, on common things, may serve to awaken an interest in nature, which shall not sleep again.

VI PREFACE.

In SO small a book little reference could be made to any system of classification ; and though the alphabet of science is as important as the alphabet of hterature to any who would make progress in it, yet the use of scientific terms would here be out of place. Perchance the reader may be led to investigate more fully the subjects here presented; and this book will have well accomplished its design, if it should create a desire to study the works of our great

naturalists, of Dr. Harvey, or Dr. Johnston, of Professor Porbes, or Rymer Jones, or other writers here so often referred to ; or if it should send him into the wide fields of nature to observe and discover for himself.

But should time and place be wanting to pursue the subject farther, yet will he have gained something, if he have learned aught of common things. " Partial knowledge/' says an Arabian proverb, " is better than total ignorance. He who cannot acquire all that he would, should be careful to get all that he can."

Chapter I. Sba-side Plants

Effect of Sea-air on Vegetation — ^Samphire— Glasswort — SalRola —Homed Poppy— Sea-holly— Cliff Cabbages— Kale— Thrift- Sea-lavender — Sea-sandwort — Sea-pearlwort — Sea-Purslane — Frosted Sea-orache — Goosefoots— Viper's Bugloss — Sea-beet— Furze — Tree Mallow— Tamarisk — Sea-buckthorn — Sea-campion — Sea-milkwort — Blue Toad-flax — Stonecrops — Sea-side Grasses — Mat-weed — Sea Lyme-grass — Sea-sedges — Sea Spurrey-sandwort — Bose-root — Golden Dock— Sea Bindweed— Centaury — Gentian — Sea-heaths — Sand Strapwort — Mountain Bock-rose — Scuryy-grass — ^Vernal Squill— Autumnal Squill — Sea-lungwort — Purple Sea-rocket — ^Asparagus — Lovage — Alexanders — Fennel — Sea-carrot — Parsley-water Dropwort — Michaelmas Daisy — Sea Stocks — Burnet Rose — Sea Buppia — Pepper-worts — Sea-radish^ — ^Sweet Alyssum — Zostera — Broomrapes— Scottish Primrose — Sea Stork's-bill— Sea-pea— Vetches — ^Trefoils— Cotton-weed— Sea-wormwood — Golden Samphire — Sea-feyerfew — Sea-camomile — Thistles — Nettles — Seaspurge — Sea-plantun — Buck's-hom Plantain-^Mountain Garlic — Knot-grass — Wort-cress — Marsh Mallow — Sea-spleenwort — Variegated Horse-tail «. p.1

Vlll CONTENTS.

Chapter II. Sea-weeds

Microscopic Algse — Bladder Fucas — Prickly Tang — Knobbed Fucns — Various uses of Fuci — Podded Halidrys— Sea-thongs — Golf-weed — Lichina — Sea-belt Tangle — Bulbous Oar-weed — Everlasting Bladder-chain — Esculent Alaria — Spiny Desmarestia — Strap-leaved Desmarestia — Dictyota — Sea-whiplash — Whipcord Fucus — Spongy Cladostephus— Peacock*s-tail Pavonia — Scarlet Hair-flag — Palmated Bhodomenia — Pepper Dulse — Blood-coloured Delesseria— Red Oak-leaved Delesseria — Winged Delesseria — Opuntia-like Catenella — Forked Purcellaria— Dotted Nitophyllum — ^Lacerated Nitophyllom — Carrageen Moss — Red Phyllophora — Feathery Ptilota — Scarlet Dasya— Esculent Iridsta — Homy Qelidium — Ciliated Ceramium — Bristly Oriffithsia — Bushy Polysiphonia — Lobster-horn Polysiphonia — Strong-jointed Coralline — Arctic Confervae — Pale-green Confervas — Broad-green Laver — Lettuce Laver — Compressed Enteromorpha — Intestine-like Enteromorpha — Purple Laver — Feathery Biyopsis p. 91

CHAPTER in.

SHELLS AND MOLLUSCOUS AITIMALS.

Uses of Shells — Of Shell-fish — Beauty in colour and structure of Mollusks — Sea-acorns — Stalked Barnacles — Transformation of Barnacles — Tunicated Mollusks — Sea-squirts — Botryllus — Bivalve Mollusks — Common Mussel — Pinna — Oyster — Mother-of-Pearl — Pearls — Scallop — Anomia — Silvery Ark — Noah's Ark — Stone-piercers — Ship-worm — Cockle— Razor Shells— Oapen — Chione Venus — Golden Venus — Truncated Donax— Tellina — Gasteropods— Limpets — Key-hole Limpets — Canoe, shells — Sea-hare — Hungarian Bonnet — Periwinkles — ^Muddy-red Trochus — Spotted Trochus — False Wentletrap — Carrier SheU — Nautioa—OceanicSnail— Cowries— Waved Whelk — ^Dog Whelk— Netted Whelk— Pelican's^foot Strombus— Cuttle-fishes — Poulpe — Common Cuttlcrfish — Sea-pen- Sea-grapes .p. M8

CONTENTS. IX

Chapter IV. Zoophytes

Coiyne — Tubulax Corallines — Common Sea-fir. — Sea-oak Coralline — Pomegranate-flowering Coralline — Herring-bone Coralline — Sea-hair — Bottle-brush Coralline — Sickle-beard — Podded Coralline — Knotted-thread Coralline — Lnminons property of Corallines — Small climbing Coralline with bell-shaped cups — Lobster-horn Corallines — Sea-fans — Sea-pen — Dead-man's Fingers — Sea Anemones — Sea-scurfe — Sea-mats — Broad-leaved Horn wrack p. 236

CHAPTER Y.

YABIOUS COMMON OBJECTS OF THE SHORE.

Bladder Chains — Fairy Purse — Hermit Crab — Common Shore-crab— Velvet Crabs— Pea Crabs — Lobster— Shrimp— Prawn- Fossil Star-fishes — Five-fingered Jack — Sun Star-fish — Brittle Star-fishes — Daisy Brittle-star — Lingthom — Sea-urchins — Common Sea-egg — Green-pea Urchin — Purple-tipped Urchin — Heart Urchins — Fiddle Urchin — Sea-cucumbers — Prickly Sea-mouse — Lug- worm — Vermicular Serpula — Nautilus-like Spirorbis — Tooth-shell Siphunculus — Terebellse — Phosphorescence of Sea — Jelly-fishes — Modeera — Scarlet Cyanea — Common Aurelia — Hairy Cyanea — Hemispherical Thaumantias — Great Sea-nettle — Globular Beroe — Immense number of Medusae — Sponges — Structure of Sponges—Common Halichondria — Sea-gullfr— Sea-Bwallow9 — Stormy Petrel — Puffins — Cormorant — Geese and Ducks — Pied Oyster-catcher — Gannet — Curlew— Dunlin p. 281

SEA-SIDE PLANTS.

Chapter I

" For there, by sea-dews nursed and airs marine. The Chelidonium blows in glaucous green ; Each refluent tide the thoru'd Eryngium laves, And its pale leaves seem tinctured by the waves ; And half way up the cliflf, whose rugged brow Hangs o'er the ever-toiling surge below, Springs the light Tamarisk ; the summit bare Is tufted by the Statice ; and there, Crash'd by the fisher, as he stands to mark Some distant signal or approaching bark, The Saltwort's starry stalks are thickly sown, Like humble worth, unheeded and unknown."

It is delightful on some fine summer's morning to wake up to the loud continuous sounds of the waves, and to stray along the shore, with eye and heart alive to the natural beauty of this world. When the calm airs seem, as the poet describes them,

'* Like Music slumbering on its instrument,''

they are to the listener both sweet and soothing, and serve — we know not how nor why — to awaken memories of the past, and so to identify themselves with our own being, that scenes far away, and long absent friends, gradually mingle in the daydreams begotten by their tones.

The glorious ocean I Can we wonder that lingering groups gather daily close by its boundaries, gazing hour after hour upon the silver waves? Call tnem not idlers. They may have come from scenes of busy toil for needfiil repose, and while listening to sweet sounds, and looking on lovely objects, they are getting treasures of memory for other days, and store of health and strength for future duty.

What thoughtful person ever listened to the ocean's murmurs without thinking over what a mass of contents its waters roll; —

** Bones of dead xnen^ that made A hidden Golgotha where they had fall'n, Unseen, unsepulchred, but not unwept By lover, friend, relation far away. Long waiting their return to home and country. And going down into their fathers' graves, With their grey hairs or youthful locks, in sorrow, To meet no more till seas give up their dead ; Some, too, — ay, thousands, — whom no living moum'd, Kone missM, waifs in the universe, the last Lorn links of kindred chains for ever sunder'd/'

We have often thought, on looking on the multitudes of invalids who with their companions crowd our shores in summer, that they would possess a great advantage if they had some outdoor pursuit with which to beguile the time. Dr. Cullen used to say that he had cured weak stomachs by engaging his patients in the study of botany, and particularly in the investigation of wild plants ; and many a head-ache, and a heartache too, would be reheved if its owner could be brought to feel an interest in the shells or sea-weeds which are strewed on the beach, or in the sweet wild blossom which smiles on the aide of

SEA>Sn>£ PLANTS, 3

the cliff. But the time spent at the sea-side is not usually the time for study. Rest of mind is often absolutely necessary for health ; and even where this is not the case, yet the many hours spent in the open air, while invigorating to the frame, render us indisposed to any continued mental exertion. It is those already in some degree acquainted with natural history, who can now enjoy its results. There are few, however, who, while for a period they are residents on our coasts, would not be glad to know some of its familiar objects, if the knowledge could be obtained without study ; and it is ior the unlearned in these matters that these pages are written.

It will be necessary to confine our remarks on the plants of our shores to such as grow only by the sea-side, or to such as grow more frequently there than elsewhere. The flowers which cluster in some of the meadows at a little distance, and many which spring up on the cliffs, thrive equally well on inland soik of the same nature. The rich clumps of the wild rock rose {Helianthenmin Tvlgare) are as bright on the chalky cliff which skirts the green lane, as on those that lie about the sea ; and, find them where we may, have so bright a golden tint, that we remember how Pliny told of them, that the kings and wise men of Persia anointed themselves with them, to make them fair and beautiful, and called them the "beauties of the sun." Then there is the wild thyme {Thymus serpyUurn), sending its sweetness from among the short grass on the cliff, or on the air of the heathland ; and the pale chocolate blossoms of the wild marjoram {Origanum vulgare)j which the Greeks termed the " joy of the mountain ; " and the pretty little euphrasy, or eyebright (^Euphrasia officinalisX which grows equally well on the pasture land far away from the sea, and which in the Greek language signified " delight ; " and many another, with old names so expressive, and so pretty withal, that we are reminded of the words said to be spoken by Mary Powell, before she married John Milton, that ^^ Adam might have named the animals, but that Eve surely named the flowers/'

Notwithstanding considerable variety in the aspect of different parts of our coast, yet every one must have remarked the general barrenness of vegetation in the immediate vicinity of the sea. Such trees as are planted near the shore, have usually a stunted appearance, and have their upper boughs bent down by the strong winds which blow over them. The sycamore is the only tree which can be said to flourish close to the sea as well as on inland spots, and to lift as bold a front and as full a canopy to the sea breeze, as to the wind of the sheltered valley; and the tamarisk and the tree mallow are almost the only shrubs which seem to prefer the saline soil for their growth. The presence of a large quantity of salt in the soil, has, from the earliest ages of the world, been known to produce sterility; and not only do the early Greek and Koman writers name the practice of sowing a field with salt when they condemned it to barrenness, but we have an instance of this named in the Scriptures, when Abimelech in his fury beat down the city of Shechem, and sowed its site with salt, that nevermore the earth should yield her produce to gladden the heart of man. The Psalmist, speaking of

S£A-SIOE PLANTS. 5

some once beautiful countiy, says, " He turneth the land into barrenness," literally, " into saltness ; " and the scanty herbage and the small number of trees and flowers usually found on the vast saline deserts of Africa, or the sandy regions of the countries of the East, are proofs at once of the injury done to vegetation by salt. On some lands of Cheshire, even of late years, when a soil has produced too abundantly the rushes and weeds which trouble the agriculturist, he has laid rock salt upon the earth to destroy them.

But it is only lands very near the sea whose produce is injuriously affected either by the muriates of the atmosphere which have passed over it, or by the saltness existing in the earth. A portion of salt is favourable to the growth of plants, and the supply of moisture derived from so large a body of water renders the land at a small distance more fertile than those parts of the earth's surface which are further from the coast. Every one at all acquainted with the southern part, especially, of our island, can call to mind some quiet nooks of sunshine in which the wild flowers attain great size and beauty, and crowd the hedgebank or meadow, only just screened by a cliff" from the rudest breezes of the sea. What Keats said of the Isle of Wight, might equally well apply to some parts of the coast of Devonshire : " I have found," said the invalid poet, ** several delightful wood alleys, and copses, and quiet freshes ; as for prinux)ses, the isle ought to be called Primrose Island — that is, if the nation of cowslips agree thereto, of which there are divers clans just beginning to lift up their heads."

But, barren as the soil is close to the sea, yet it has its own peculiar plants ; plants which will grow nowhere else — saline plants, which, if carried away to grace some inland garden, droops and pine for their native shore. Others grow not only by the sea-side, but on pasture lands to which saline waters have access ; and some which grow in our inland fields, yet are so much more luxuriant near the shore, that we must consider that as at least an especial place of their growth. So small, however, is the number of wild plants of the sea side, that limited as is this little volume, they can be enumerated in the chapter appropriated to them.

There are few subjects more interesting to the botanist than the adaptation of plants to their

Eeculiar places of growth. The most lofty Alpine ills have their blossoms, and the deep blue gentian thrives amid the snows,

** The living flower that skirts the eternal frost ; "

the sand has its sand-worts, which refuse to grow on richer soils. The magnificent cedar is wild on its native Lebanon only ; Lapland boasts her flower called Charles's Sceptre, which is never seen beyond the limits of her own land. Even the dreary Siberia has her own beautiful Cypripedium, or, as we in English term it, the ladies' slipper. Our streams have their water-lilies, our meadows their field flowers, our woods their anemones and hyacinths. At the extreme limits of vegetation we find the wood sorrel, ferns, lichens, and mosses cover the grey rocks; one lichen growing even on the forbidding surface of the stalactite. There are plants which are indigenous to sulphureous springs, and a little flower

S^A-SIDE PLANTS. 7

grows in luxuriance on the refuse of the lead mine. The sea itself has on its bed immense tribes of marine vegetation, the food and home of its living creatures; and where but in the sound of its waves shall we find that bright flower of our sand and shingle, the yellow homed poppy ?

There are some features in our wild saline plants which, while they are not invariable or peculiar to them, yet are very general. They are usually very succulent, and their stems and foliage have on them more or less of a sea-green powder, — a kind of pale green or whitish bloom. Leaves or stems covered with this are termed by botanists glaucous, and a very familiar instance of glaucous foliage may be seen in the outer leaves of the common cabbage. The succulent nature of sea-side plants renders them suitable for soils which yield little nourishment ; for succulent plants have many pores, by means of which they readily imbibe moisture, which is long retained in their juices, and which, deriving as they do from rains or dews, renders them less dependent on nutriment to be obtained from the root. The common houseleek and stonecrop of our house-tops are nourished far more by the atmosphere than by the soil ; and so are the aloe and the fig marigold, and the ice plant of desert lands, many of which are like the plants of our sea side, too, in the glaucous nature of their green.

One of our sea-side plants, the Samphire {Grith^ mum maritimuTn)^ is known, at least by name, to most persons. Several of our early poets have alluded to it, and its frequent use as a pickle renders it familiar to many. Not one of our native plants can yield so good, and warm, and aromatic a flavour for a pickle as this ; and it has been a

8 SEA-SIDE PLANTI^*

favourite with good housewives for many years ; for an old song of Heywood's, enumerating the cries of London in his time, has this line, —

" I ha' rock samphier, rock samphier."

The inhabitants of places whose rocks abound with this plant use it not only as a pickle, but also as an ingredient in salads ; and they also eat it as a culinary vegetable. It is sometimes grown in gardens and pots, and it appears under certain circumstances to thrive well. Thus Braddick, the horticulturist, who cultivated the samphire in Thames Ditton, on a sheltered and dry spot, well screened from the morning sun, and who sprinkled the soil where it grew with powdered barilla, remarks of it, " This I do to furnish the plant with a supply of soda, since, in its native place of growth, it possesses the power of decomposing sea-water, from which it takes the fossil alkali, and rejects the muriatic acid." This horticulturist also protected it from the cold of winter, and he found that by this mode of treatment the plants flourished most plentifully, and produced a large supply of leaves and shoots, which were cut twice in the season.

The stem of the samphire is about a foot high, round and leafy; and it has dense clusters of greenish-white flowers. The whole plant is fleshv and glaucous, with a salt aromatic flavour. It grows on several rocky shores of our southern coast, but it is not common in the north of England. It is very rare on the rocks of Scotland ; and Sir William Hooker remarks of it, — " It is found only, I believe, on the coast of Galloway, and thence northward to Colzean Castle, Ayr-

8EA-Sn>E PLAINTS. 9

shire (whence I have received numerous specimens), and at Aberlady, Haddingtonshire." He adds, that when the process of drying this plant for the Herbarium is aided by immersion in hot water, a number of opaque wmte dots make their appearance on the surface.

The samphire is always found on rocks or stone walls beyond the reach of the tide. The chalk hills of Dovor, which gave its old name to that ancient town, the Dwyr of the Saxons, from their ** Dwfyrrha," a " steep place," have long been celebrated for the growth of samphire. Michael Drayton refers to it in his Poly-Olbion : —

** Some, his ill-8eaBon*d mouth that rightly anderstood, Bob Dover's neighbouring cleeyes of samphyre, to excite His dull and sickly taste, and stir up appetite."

And the very name of the Shakspeare Cliff was derived from its connexion with the passage in which the great dramatist refers to this plant. That cliff has recently suffered from the longcontinued action of rain and sunshine upon it ; but as long as it exists, the samphire will probably continue to thrive there. We must quote again the oft-quoted lines on this subject, and which, indeed, well describe the scene from the summit of the cliff:—

" How fearful, And dizzy *tis to cast one's eyes so low ! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles ; half-way down Hangs one that gathers samphire, — dreadful trade ; Methinks he seems no bigger than his head ; The fishermen that walk upon the beach Appear like mice, and yon tall anchoring bark Diminish'd to her cock, her cock a buoy, Almost too small for sight : the murm'ring surge^ That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes,

Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more. Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong/'

This trade of samphire gathering from the cliff has indeed proved a dangerous one. A few years since, a man, resident in Dovor, and who had for many summers gathered the plant for sale in the neighbourhood, was suspended, as usual, by a rope attached to a pole at the summit. The rope, on this occasion, suddenly gave way, and the unfortunate man was precipitated to the base of the cliff, and expired immediately.

The word Samphire is a corruption of St. Pierre, the plant having, in former times, been dedicated to the memory of the Apostle ; and it was also familiarly called St. Peter's Herb. It had, besides, the name of Crest Marine. The monks, as we well know, gave the names of the wild plants known to them, according to the times when they came into blossom, making them the remembrancers of their saints'* days and festivals. Upwards of three hundred plants, now in use, and recorded in our works of medical botany, under different names, were known in years long passed away in the monasteries, as the medicinal^ herbs used by the religious orders. A writer in Kees's Encyclopaedia says that we ought to pronounce and spell the name of this plant sampire, our modern orthography and pronunciation being a corruption of this. But our quotations from the old writers serve to show that various modes of spelling the word were used in past times ; nor indeed need we wonder at this, when even in the days of Queen Elizabeth a man would spell his own name half a dozen ways if it could possibly bear such a variety of modes of orthography* The word samphler, as Heywood spells it, seems to give the nearest similarity in sound to its original derivation.

Crabbe, who resided at a part of our coast where vegetation is peculiarly barren, refers to this plant, as well as to one mentioned afterwards, the saltwort. His pictures of sea-shore scenery are always mournful and dreary, nor is this description of the salt river-side less so : —

" With ceaseless motion comes and goes the tide ; Flowing, it fills the channel vast and wide ; Then back to sea, with strong majestic sweep, It rolls in ebb, yet terrible and deep : Here sampire banks and saltwort bunnd the flood ; There staU:s of sea-weed withering in the mud ; And higher up, a ridge of all things base, Which some strong tide has roU'd upon the place."

The samphire is found also on the rocky shores of other countries, as in Italy, Spain, and France, and is used there, as with us, as an article of food and luxury.

Somewhat similar to this plant, and commonly known as the annual samphire, is the jointed glasswort {Salicomia herhacea\ so abundant on the salt marshes near our coast, or on muddy shores occasionally overflowed by Ihe tide. It is a leafless herb, of pale bright green, and much succulence^ and it flowers in August and September. The poor people who reside in the neighbourhood of these marshes gather this plant, and sell it for the purpose of pickling; and, assisted by strongly flavoured spices, it is certainly as good a herb for a pickle as many another one commonly used ; but the aromatic flavour of the real samphire is wanting in this plant, whose juices have in themselves only a saltish mawkish flavour. Those who know the real samphire are not likely to purchase this ; and similar as it is in general appearance^ it differs much in its flowers, which consist of dense spikes, jointed like the stem, and bearing at the base of every articulation, on two opposite sides, a cluster of three little blossoms. It was formerly called jointed glasswort, crabbe grasse, and frog grasse, and we now frequently near it termed marsh samphire, to distinguish it from the rock plant. Its saltish taste renders it very agreeable to animals, and it is one of the plants which, on our saline soils, prove so beneficial to cattle, that they are often sent there by their owners to regain lost flesh and strength. Most animals enjoy feeding on this kind of herbage, as the whole of it must be more or less impregnated with salt, and it is not unlikely that the sea air has upon the frame of the inferior animals the same invigorating effect which it has upon the constitution of man.

This glasswort, as well as several other species^ abounds on the shores of the Mediterranean, and they are all included under the name of Erborcali, by the Italians, while the German name of glassschmaltz, like our glasswort, is significant of the uses of these plants m Germany. In the south of Europe, as well as in northern Africa, this salicornia was burnt for the soda which its ashes contain ; and this material was much in use by the soap and glass manufacturer of these countries. At Marseilles, especially, a great quantity was gathered from the sea-shores for the purpose of burning for soda. We have another British species, called the creeping-glasswort {SaUcor^ nia radicans), which is very much like the former kind, only that it is more branching and straggllng ; and it is distinguished bj having a perennial steni; which, at the lower part, is quite woody, and about a foot long. It grows some* times on the edge of a low muddy bank depending from thence ; but it is a rare plant. It has been found in the Isle of Sheppey, in Kent, and also on the Norfolk and Sussex coasts. The botanic name of the genus, taken from salt and a horn, is very expressive of the nature and form of the plants.

But the abundance of soda yielded by several sea-side vegetables is in none greater than in the genus of plants called ScUsola, by botanists, one of which is the prickly-saltwort of our shores. These plants, like the samphire and marsh samphire, are pickled with vinegar and eaten at table. The various uses of soda have rendered some species of this genus of considerable importance ; and our only native kind was once much valued for the alkaline salts yielded by its ashes. Carbonate of soda has, however, of late years, been obtained from common and rock salt, so that the impure soda once procured from sear-weeds, and called kelp, and the more valuable barilla yielded by the soda plants, are no longer in request in this country. The prickly saltwort {Salsola Kali) is a spreading plant, with awl-shaped leaves, tipped with spines, and an angular stem with pale greenish flowers growing close down upon it. it blossoms in July, and grows very generally among the sands of the shore. This species is not a native of our coasts only, but is plentiful on most sandy shores in all parts of the world, and its value in producing soda is very generally known. The species of saltwort called the round-leaved saltwort {Salsola sativa) was cultivated very extensively in southern Europe, and furnished the best soda used in this quarter of the world. Its produce is called by the merchant, the Spanish or Alicant soda. The large cultivar tors of this soda plant along the Mediterranean shores of Spain, found during the long war, in the early part of this century, so great an increase in the value of the soda, that they wished to extend the culture of the saltwort. They therefore tried the experiment of forming some salsola fields farther inland. But the plan proved unsuccessful, for although the plant was luxuriant, yet the quantity of soda was so much diminished as to render it of little worth. The planters ascertained the fact, that, as long as the land sloped upwards from the sea, the saltwort was rich in its alkaline products; but when the field sloped inland, the soda decreased. The saline soil, and the saline winds and vapours of the ocean, were needed to render it a true saltwort. Neither is our native species a plant which flourishes remote from the sea.