Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/177

Rh as every tide washes in very perfect specimens of many of the deep-sea species, while the rock-pools are brilliant with Cladophoræ, Chylodadiæ and Polysiphonia, and an abundance of Codium tomentosum and Laurencia pinnatifida. The economic uses of the Algæ, described as useless by old Virgil, is well illustrated here in early summer. In May the old frond of Laminaria digitata becomes constricted, and is pushed off by the new frond, and the first storm drives in masses of this weed, forming often a bank four or five feet in depth: the natives call it "Scie weagh," meaning the May fleece, and the scene when it is coming in is an animated one. In one bay seventy carts may be counted, the horses up to the girths in the sea, and the natives forking up the precious crop. In the Faunett district, which has a coast of six miles, 8500 tons are secured, which, when dried, produces about 400 tons. From the beginning of August till the end of September is another busy time, when the "harvest weed" comes ashore: it consists of the variety stenophylla of Laminaria digitata, which is quite entitled to be ranked as a species, as it sheds not only its frond, but also a portion of the stipes, and its structure and chemical constitution are entirely different. Leaving the shore and going further west, one is struck by the abundance of the royal fern, which, instead of being the nearly extirpated rarity it is in the Clyde Valley, is here a common weed, growing in clumps like a little forest: it is disliked by the farmers, and, along with rushes and mosses, are all to be banished by drainage, "when the times mend." Ferns are not so specifically numerous as in Scotland.

In Marine Zoology there is much to interest and delight the student. At a short distance from the shore the boat glides over a stretch of Laminariæ-covered bottoms, where the large Eclimus spheræ may be seen prowling over the brown seaweed in the society of numerous star-fishes, shoals of Medusæ, and the beautiful zoophyte, Cydippe pileus, while multitudes of dogfish sport along the surface. The estuarine shores of Lough Swilly yield numerous species of Mollusca, while at Fort Stewart the whole littoral zone is covered with the shells of Anomia ephippium and Pecten striatus, and thousands of the valves of the oyster recall the days when that succulent bivalve could be bought here for threepence per hundred.

As for Mammalia, the Otter is too frequent. The Squirrel, Ferret, Fox, Weasel, Bat, and Hedgehog are often to be seen, and