sea-weeds themselves, we shall find abundant illustrations of such
primitive types for our present purpose--that of slightly tracing some
of the variations and adaptations of particular parts and organs by
which Nature effects the beautification of the objects themselves. Nor
as we regard these objects under the microscope--for it will require the
high powers of that instrument to develop their minute structure--can we
avoid being struck with the elegance of the twistings and contortions,
the lacings and interlacings, of even the most simple threads, as they
congregate and combine to form those dense masses, velvety tufts, or
hazy films by which their myriads are made evident to the human eye. The
development of certain cells into spores, and the wonderful generative
processes by which the algæ are propagated, belong, however interesting,
more to the domains of natural history than to our present inquiry.
Suffice it to say that, by the impregnation of the endochrome of one
cell by that of another, the spores--or seeds, as for expressiveness
they may here be termed--are produced by the granulation of the mixed
matter. Now, in the different aspects and conditions of these
spore-cells arises that first divergence from the mere thread of beads
by which Nature, while she retains the principle and object of the organ
itself in its adaptation to special conditions, seems to vary in every
possible manner and way, not only in form and sculpture, but often in
colour, her most primitive organizations. Even the contraction of the
endochrome itself, in the granulating process, by the production of
intermittent vacant spaces, adds a pleasing variation to many of these
moniliform filaments.
[Illustration: _Sphærozyga Berkeleyana._]
[Illustration: _Spermosira Harveyana._]
[Illustration: _Sphærozyga Carmichaelii._]
[Illustration: _Sphærozyga Thwaitesii._]
In some species of this class the continuity of the congregated cells is
interrupted, besides by the spore cells, by a connecting cell, or
heterocyst, differing in form from either, and not unusually of an
entirely opposite and contrasting colour. Such is the case with the
_Spermosira Harveyana_, a very minute species of nostoc, found on dead
leaves in the summer month of June. The rudimentary cells of its
exquisite curved filaments are small cylinders, the spore capsules
completely spherical, and the heterocysts subquadrate, inclining to
oval. The colours vary in each, and are in the first of a translucent
bluish green,--of course, therefore, the prevailing hue,--which is
charmingly relieved by the deep brown of the second and the pale pink of
the last.
These constitutional forms, in their varieties and adaptations, their
manner of growth and development, constitute the entire structure of the
whole tribe of sea-weeds; and therefore we ought to find the chief
features of any elegance these humble forms possess continued and
elaborated, as they really are, in the more complex conditions of the
higher fuci. In the sections of the sea-weeds, therefore, even as made
for the scientific elucidation of their structure, we may expect to
find, as we undoubtedly shall do, many hints and lessons.
The true form of the cell is perhaps the globe, but it is more commonly
presented to us as the cylinder, the conditions and outlines of which
are varied almost _ad infinitum_, as by the various effects of growth
and pressure the cells are forced into hexagons, pentagons, and other
mathematical shapes, or their lines of junction are disposed in
undulating tracery of the most elegant and intricate patterns.
[Illustration:
_Magnified Transverse Section of Arthrocladia villosa._
]
Of the few sections we have engraved as illustrations, the first is that
of a pretty knotted sea-weed, rather rare, but still not uncommon on the
southern coasts of our island in the summer and autumn seasons--the
_Arthrocladia villosa_. Around the tubular axis the larger rings are
disposed,--to which circle upon circle of the smaller succeed to the
verge of the periphery, yielding to the forms of the intermediate
cavities in numerous appropriate shapes. In the second we have given a
cross section of the compressed frond of the _Desmarestia ligulata_, an
inhabitant of the tidal pools at extreme low water on most parts of our
coasts. An internal jointed tube passes up the centre of the frond, and
gives rise to the obscure midrib perceptible on the surfaces of the
sides; on either side the larger cells are disposed in two opposing flat
arcs, and compressed into shapes more or less hexagonal, outside of
which, in the second row, the pentagonal form prevails, and then the
intermediate exterior and interior spaces are filled by smaller cellules
of more irregular outlines.
[Illustration: _Magnified Transverse Section of Frond of Desmarestia
ligulata._]
[Illustration: _Magnified Transverse Section of Spore-bearing Receptacle
of Fucus vesiculosus._]
The third section is made across one of the spore-bearing receptacles
which tip--as yellow warty excrescences--the flat olive fronds of the
common bladder-weed, _Fucus vesiculosus_, so common in dense meadows
everywhere on our shores. The interior, filled with mucus, is traversed
by a network of jointed fibres, which communicate with the spherical
conceptacles immersed in the outer substance, and containing the spores
and the antheridia. That there are other and many sections far more
intricate and beautiful any one can testify who has ever turned over the
fine plates of Professor Harvey’s “Phycologia Britannica,” his
admirable papers in the publications of the Smithsonian Society, or the
noble folio volume of Postel and Ruprecht; but in these simple ones here
given--and selected on that very account--we find Nature contriving
elegant and pleasing devices by the mere repetition and combination of
the circle, the hexagon, or the pentagon, and producing by such means a
pleasing unity and richness of effect instead of a sameness or a
poverty. At any rate, whenever Nature does produce a beautiful object,
we shall never be the worse for examining the principles by which she
has worked, and it is in the least complicated that we must first hope
to find the rudimentary laws of her beauty-building. With rule and
compass we can excel her in accuracy--with reason, experience, and
remembrance, we can improve upon her labours in our artificial
productions; but, notwithstanding the many exquisite objects of art
produced by our modern jewellers, there is by far too much
conventionality and routine in the more ordinary bijouterie of every-day
wear; and we might from such sections alone acquire many novelties in
the setting of gems, pearls, and pebbles, as well as gain many
advantages over the arbitrary whims of an unguided, although it may be a
cultivated, mind. Not only might the real be thus improved by adopting
the mathematical solids or traceries thus suggested, but there are
numerous articles of mock jewellery in which shells, fictitious agates,
and inferior cameos are largely used, the designers for which might be
advantageously employed for a season by the seaside, where their eyes
would become accustomed to the sober olive of the weeds; and it might
then be found that a bronze setting would not only be more truthful,
but more useful and chaste, than a hypocritical gilt surface, that
reveals at every touch the baser metal beneath. And here, with these few
words of explanation and suggestion, for the present let me leave this
unworked vein--merely adding that the longitudinal sections are as
fanciful as the transverse, and in viewing the latter we may oftentimes
imagine we are examining fairy ribands and laces of the most delicate
texture.
But however complicated the combinations of the cellular and vascular
tissues become as we ascend in the scale of creation, the development of
forms and tints in every natural object is as dependent upon fixed laws
as the beauty and colouring of a picture on the skill and innate genius
of the artist. Few artists, however, if any, work by rule; in their
studies they attain instinctively, as it were, a conceptive knowledge of
the beautiful; they find Nature ever varying, and they find variety the
source of beauty; they find that an object composed of lines contrasts
pleasantly with circles; that the upraised hands of a speaker should be
opposed by the folded arms of the listeners--the energetic by the
prostrate; and so they go on, acquiring a science by perception, of
which the more ethereal portion has never yet been reduced to written
rules, and is so subtle that perhaps it never will be. That designers
work more usually by their innate taste and their manual skill is
evinced by the many elegant absurdities that one constantly meets.
And now I would arrest the first objection that could be raised against
the sea-weeds as objects of design--their inapplicability on the ground
of appropriateness. There is an appropriateness, the world will say,
about flowers; they have a language of their own, in which they speak
the rarest poetry; the saints of all the days of the year have their
dedications of these gems of the fields; the nymphs of the forest and
dell, the Naiades and mythological celestials without end have
patronised them; besides, it is so natural to paper our walls with
roses, to have garlands woven in our dresses; and our maidens only deck
their hair with the artificial because the real will fade. What more
proper than a plate of leaves for fruit, or a decanter ornamented with
grapes? True; but what more absurd than a vase of cabbage-leaves
supported on the flourishing tails of twisted dolphins; or a jug
composed of a gigantic head, from which we pour the contents through the
perforated body of a swan, with its neck immersed in a sturdy flag, and
of such reversed proportions and of such diminutive size that a whole
flock might roost in the interior of an egg, without any of them
experiencing that unpleasant inconvenience which nursery rhymes
attribute to the old lady who lived in the shoe? These are broad
absurdities, although the objects themselves may be elegant and of
costly ware: thus showing at once that the grace of natural objects is
dependent upon the laws of mathematical form, for there is nothing in
the subjects we have noticed to interest--no hidden allusion--and all
that is pleasing arises from the lines of contour. But there are more
subtle misapplications, which ordinarily escape detection. Is it quite
correct to bind the tendrils of the vine round the unpretending jugs
which are dedicated to the pure fluid of the teetotaler, or those that
are charged with foaming ale? to defend our butter with a belt of
hissing snakes, or pass jets of sweet water through fountains of
gigantic cockle-shells and marine monsters? And yet many of these things
we constantly forgive; then surely we might extend some of that mercy,
if they required it, to the sea-weeds, which we do not withhold from
reptiles, especially if it can be shown that they are available for more
artistic purposes than for pretty picture-making in albums and herbaria,
or for fancy baskets, with a hackneyed apologetic legend, in bazaars.
[Illustration: _Ulva linza._]
It cannot be expected that the designer should carry on the laborious
researches of the man of science, or make the delicate sections which
the naturalist finds necessary for the determination of species and the
comprehension of the phenomena of structure and vitality; that he
should have one eye for the microscope, and the other for his pencil;
nor that the philosopher should have all the accomplishments of the
artist; but as the boundless universe is dependent upon everything that
exists for its unity and harmony, so art cannot neglect even natural
sciences with impunity, for, at least, every branch is capable of adding
an expression or a charm. Pardon, therefore, the simple belief that even
the rudiments of vegetable structure and the section of a sea-weed or a
plant are not unworthy of inspection for artistic purposes, and that
they may _suggest_, if not actually exhibit, exquisite combinations of
mathematical figures which are not inappropriate decorative ornaments
for most varied purposes.
[Illustration: _Fucus nodosus._]
Along high-water mark, as high as the spray bedews the rugged beds of
stone, grow the green confervæ; within the tidal zone is the territory
of the olive fuci; and the deep is the home of the red weeds, sometimes
to be found at dead low water, and even higher on the shore, in like
manner as algæ of vivid green are traced to depths of thirty, forty, and
even fifty fathoms; for although the rules hold generally good, there
are exceptions--as it is said there must be to all rules, to prevent
their becoming axioms. Such, too, of olive, red, and green, is the
artificial arrangement by which botanists have classified the algæ, the
colours and characters being sufficiently associated and distinctive for
even scientific grouping.
Having glanced already at the species of lowest organization, let us
take one other instance of the applicability of sea-weeds as objects of
design. A dozen collected at random, in one’s walk from the edge of the
beach to the rim of the tide, would more than suffice for many different
applications and manufactures; and the very commonest are equally
valuable, and often better than the rarest. Take, then, the first
handful you can collect. Among the gatherings of such a parcel are sure
to be found some very applicable forms, such as the _Ulva linza_,
represented at page 107; the _Fucus nodosus_, page 108; the _Fucus
vesiculosus_, page 103; the _Fucus serratus_, here given; _Halidrys
siliquosa_, page 110; _Dictyota dichotoma_; _Laminaria Phyllitis_; _L.
digitata_; _L. saccharina_, &c.
[Illustration: _Fucus serratus._]
[Illustration: _Halidrys siliquosa._]
It is not in the herbarium, not in drawings, not when dried and
shrivelled, and black and contorted, that we can see the beauty of
sea-weeds; such are no more than the bleared and withered mummies of
Egyptian men to the fresh vigour of youth: it is while free and waving
in the waters that we must search for the best elucidations of their
habits and gracefulness. Years ago Ray wrote in his earnest and noble
manner:--“Let us then consider the works of God, and observe the
operations of his hands. Let us take notice of, and admire, his infinite
wisdom and goodness in the formation of them: no creature in this
sublunary world is capable of so doing besides man, and yet we are
deficient herein: we content ourselves with the knowledge of the
tongues, or a little skill in philology, or history perhaps, and
antiquity, and neglect that which to me seems more material--I mean
natural history, and the works of creation. I do not discommend or
derogate from those other studies; I should betray mine own ignorance
and weakness should I do so: I only wish that _this_ might be brought
into fashion among us. I wish men would be so equal and civil as not to
disparage, deride, and villify those studies which themselves skill not
of, or are not conversant in; no knowledge can be more pleasant than
this, none that doth so satisfie and feed the soul, in comparison
whereto that of words and phrases seem to me insipid and jejune.” How he
would have rejoiced at the popular movement introduced by Mr. Mitchell
at the Zoological Gardens, and since so powerfully backed up by other
colossal vivaria of the day; the aquaria at the Crystal Palace,
Brighton, Ramsgate, and other places; and what results would he not have
predicted when, in walking through the mammontainted streets of our
great metropolis, he passed dozens of shops for the sale of aquaria,
vivaria, glass jars, siphons, prawns, mussels, anemones, efts, and
sticklebacks! All these and many more living things cannot be kept and
nourished, watched and fed, without the spread of that knowledge which
is known, and the acquirement of a vast deal that is new. Naturalists
will no longer be able to write books on things they have never seen;
and hasty jumpings to conclusions, and closet speculations, will be
rarer as the chance of detection becomes the greater, and the spirit in
which all true men of science do labour, and ever have done, is the more
rightly appreciated. The Merry Monarch’s little spaniel has its collar
of red morocco, with its silver plate, and the imprisoned songster of a
warmer clime is confined in a pretty cage. The love of natural history
is not the cherished taste of the poor--it is not bounded by the
circumscribed limits of the middle ranks, who find in a glass jar of
living objects from the pond or sea a refreshing pastime from the heavy
cares of daily bread, and a cooling relief from toil, or the feverish
anxieties of money-making; but the love of natural history lives no less
in high places and delicate minds, whose susceptibilities have been
heightened by every kind of culture, gaze with delight on the glittering
armour of the scaly fish, and watch with interest the actions, motions,
and habits of the thousand instructive objects to be collected at any
time in a single tide. How charming to give a little elegance to the
transparent homes to which we consign our new-made pets! We no longer
confine ourselves to cheap glass and zinc fountains. White marble and
bronze have brought our favourites into the boudoir and the
drawing-room. Look at the festoons of fuci on the rugged rocks: have not
worse things been chiselled and cast? and at that tall bundle of crisp
_Laminaria Phyllitis_, as it stands erect in the transparent water. How
charmingly a crystal vase would rest upon its slightly diverging crests,
like the abacus on the leaves of a Corinthian pillar! how delicate the
slight frillings of the margins of its translucent fronds!
Various other applications are at once suggested by the little group we
have figured; such are mouldings, beadings, tracery, and cornices, and
for the sculpture of mahogany and other dark woods; and in our progress
through the more elaborate forms of sea-weeds we shall find very much to
admire as elegant, and as applicable to manufactures and to the
ornamentation of various objects--often of opposite purposes.
II.
As one coming in a strange land for the first time, on a junction of
many roads, finds himself bewildered, and hesitating in his choice which
to take, being ignorant which leads to the fairest places, and not
knowing what beauties he may miss by selecting the one or the other, so
in displaying the attractions of sea-weeds for artistic purposes--a
field where so little has been attempted--it is not easy to decide,
where so many courses appear to be open. It is not the difficulty of a
beginning, for the start has been made; nor of the end, for a
precipitate retreat has happened to more than one illustrious character;
and if these pages could prove as entertaining as the immortal Sam’s
valentine, even “a sudden pull up” might only make the reader “wish
there was more.” But the difficulty is in adopting that order of
narration which shall be most attractive in securing for the neglected
sea-weeds their due meed of recognition and reward.
In the former chapter are figured some of those prevalent species which
no one could fail to find in a walk along the shore: in this, which is
devoted to the olive weeds or true fuci, the illustrations are drawn
chiefly from among others of those common forms which are accessible to
everybody, about which there are no considerations of rarity, pains, or
price, and which indeed are always to be had for the trouble of picking
them up.
These _Melanosperms_ are characterized by naturalists as plants of an
olive green or brown colour, and as being in their fructification either
monœcious or diœcious, that is, having the distinctive organs on
the same or on different plants. They are propagated by spores, either
developed externally, or singly, or in groups in proper conceptacles,
each spore being enveloped in a pellucid skin called a perispore, and
being in some cases simple, and in others ultimately dividing into two,
four, or eight sporules. Antheridia--a term admitted as indicative only,
and by courtesy in the case of algæ, the actual propriety of the term
being still contested--appear in some; in others are transparent cells
filled with orange-coloured vivacious corpuscles, possessed of free
motion by means of vibratile cilia. The whole group is marine. If any
take objection to the word “plants,” the botanist will tell them that
algæ have a double respiration, like their higher sisters of the
land,--that by day they absorb carbonic-acid gas, and give out the
life-supporting oxygen, and that in the silent hours of the night they
reverse the process, and emit carbonic-acid gas.
To point out their relations and concordances with terrestrial
vegetation is, however, a very easy task; but not so is it to draw the
line between animality and vegetation. Some authors, indeed, and those
not despicable ones, have gone so far as to assert that the germs of
some sea-weeds, in their first condition, are actually endowed with
life. Be this as it may, no line has yet been drawn which separates
either distinctly or decisively the animal from the plant; and, as Dr.
Lindley truly observes, “whatever errors of observation may have
occurred, those very errors, to say nothing of the true ones, show the
extreme difficulty, not to say impossibility, of pointing out the exact
frontier of either kingdom.” We commence our present division--and shall
follow the like course with the others--with its higher forms, and,
proceeding in descending order, shall in each conclude with those humble
rudimentary forms in which the rigid divisions of classification are
obliterated, and the only differences which can be assigned are, at
best, but little more than arbitrary.
To me how welcome and how dear are the olive algals of the rocky shores!
Born within sound of the surging waves, for ever singing “their unrhymed
lyric lays”--from infancy to manhood living on the margin of the briny
deep--how fresh and dear to me these much-neglected things! “What
pleasant visions haunt me” of childish hopes and fears; and as again I
seem to
“Gaze upon the sea,
All the old romantic legends,
All my dreams come back to me.”
And in Fancy’s realms my drooping thoughts pass on to those homeless
wanderers over the face of the earth, for whom never more the scenes of
their first homes will wear a charm--who, torn from all familiar ties,
and tossed and buffeted on the sea of life, may perish unregarded in
some far-distant land. The surging crests of the great ocean’s waves oft
cast, to moulder on our shores, the weeds and plants of other climes. We
have figured one of these fragments, which, after its long and
boisterous wanderings from the Azores to the eastern shores of the new
world, across the wide Atlantic to our own boreal coasts of the old, has
lost but little of its beauty. In the days of old adventure the matted
cords of this charming species stopped the famous Spaniard’s ships; and
still the long and narrow floating isles of Gulf-weeds--shunned by the
sailor--are the resting-places of myriads of crabs, and other hosts of
ocean’s progenies hide and nestle in its watery bowers.
But charming as the _Sargassum bacciferum_ is in its gracefulness, and
attractive as it may be in its historic associations, naturalists would
not, of course, admit either itself or its congener, the _Sargassum
vulgare_, as a truly British kind, but would properly regard them as
stray waifs from tropical climes. The generic name is a Latinisation of
the term sargazo, given to the Gulf-weeds by the companions of Columbus,
and will for ever preserve the memory of its first discoverer; while the
ancient specific additamentum of _natans_, or swimming, was highly
characteristic of the habits of the species.
Next in the ranks, and foremost of the really British weeds, stands the
common, but elegant, _Halidrys siliquosa_, already figured at page 110,
distinguished from all other fuci by the compound structure of its
air-vessels--a character peculiar to it, and to the beautiful _Fucus
osmundaceus_, of the western shores of North America. In the last the
structure is slightly different, the vesicles being constricted at the
joints like strings of beads. The air-vessels of the _Halidrys
siliquosa_ are those pea-pod-like expansions of the frond, divided into
chambers, which seem almost to take the place of leaves in the engraving
(p. 110).
[Illustration: _Sargassum bacciferum, or Gulf-weed._]