Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/104

85 of kelp,—some useful as food, and a nutritive diet for invalids, and many yielding Iodine so extensively used in medicine, in great quantity,

In the second series, or Rhodospermeæ, almost all the plants are purple or rose-colored and some of the most elegant forms which our Nereis affords are found here. For delicacy what can compare with the various forms, like spun glass, of the Griffithsia, a genus named after that talented Algologist, Mrs. Griffiths, and the pretty banded Ceramiæ. Chrysimenia has its representative in the rock pools at Queenscliff in the species obovata, which, when cast ashore and bleached, Professor Harvey fancies has some resemblance to the egg clusters of some of the Gasteropodous Mollusca, so frequent on our beaches, the little horny branchlets (ramuli) being invariably ruptured. The Hypnæa episcopalis is sure to be met with, and may be at once known by its long and naked hooked branchlets or tendrils, deep crimson at their tips; from which color and their peculiar form, they have been fancifully supposed to resemble a bishop's crozier—and hence the specific term—episcopalis. The varied forms of Plocamium will give work enough to the student, but their extreme elegance will amply repay him. The family Rhodomelaceæ abounds in beauties,—the hairy, blood red Dasyas; the dark brownish purple Lenormandia, from the midrib of which spring obtuse leaflets (phyllodia); the bright Polyzonias, parasitic on Gelidium glandulæfolium and other Algæ; the oakleaved Thuretia, and the tessellated Amansia linearis are amongst the prettiest of the Australian Algæ, the