The ocean / By P. H. Gosse.

  • Gosse, Philip Henry, 1810-1888.
Date:
[pref. 1845]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The ocean / By P. H. Gosse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    48/388 (page 30)
    together, and all the morning stars to shout for joy. Yet we may with adoring gratitude recognise the love which remembers man, and provides many natural objects for his appropriation; endowing them with qualities which his intelligence discovers to be use- ful, and which alleviate the privation and toil of his fallen condition. A substance called kelp, an impure carbonate of soda, important in the manufacture of soap and of glass, is the produce of these “ worthless ” weeds. Some years ago, the coasts and islands of Scotland yielded 20,000 tons of this valuable substance an- nually, which was worth ten pounds sterling per ton; but through the increased consumption of ba- rilla, an alkali imported from Spain, it has some- what diminished. The autumnal storms detach large quantities of Algce (a general name applied to all the sea-weeds), which are washed ashore. The inhabitants of the coast, aware of their value, hurry down to secure the riches thus freely pre- sented, and either cast them on their fields as a va- luable manure, or burn them into kelp. In Scot- land, the kelp-kiln is nothing but a round pit dug in the sand or earth on the beach, and surrounded by a few loose stones. In the morning a fire is kindled in this pit, generally with the aid of turf or peat. The fire is gradually fed with sea-weed, in such a state of dryness that it will merely burn. In the course of the day, the furnace becomes nearly full of melted matter, and iron rakes are then drawn rapidly backward and forward through the mass to compact it, or bring the whole into an