Its
broad, crinkled and bright green leaves are rather like those of a
lettuce. Sometimes it is boiled to a jelly and used for food. Many other
sea-weeds are good to eat, and on some coasts there is a regular
sea-weed harvest.
Now wade into rather deeper water, and you find a great mass of the
Bladder Wrack. Most schoolboys know it, for the little bladders of air
in the leaves explode with a pop if you squeeze them. The Bladder Wrack,
and others of the same kind, are torn up by the fierce waves in a storm,
and tossed on the beach in heaps. They are gathered by the farmer who
knows how to value a cheap manure for his fields. Some kinds are also of
use in packing lobsters so that they come to market nice and fresh.
When you have walked--in your diving dress--to deep water, you find
yourself among a tangle of olive-green weeds. They are below the line of
low tide. All round you is a forest of dark-green ribbons with wavy
edges. The ribbons are tough and very long, and cling tightly to the
rocks. These ribbon-weeds, and others of the same kind, are known as
Tangles. Round some parts of our coast they make wide, thick beds in the
sea.
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