SEAWEED AS HAT TRIMMING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15056, 27 July 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

SEAWEED AS HAT TRIMMING.

PRECIOUS FLOTSAM.

The longshoremen of the Isle of Grain are agitating for a close season for the zoophyte weed, whoso fine texture and delicate tracery have created a large demand for it amongst florists. The islanders are asking that the Kent and Essex Sea Fisheries Committee shall prohibit the collection of the precious material while it is growing, between March 21 and September 21. -

This seaweed, much used for fashionable millinery, is of a peculiarly beautiful pattern—not unlike some of the foliage which Jack Frost traces on the window panes. It used to wash in from the Nora when the wind blew off the land, but only in the autumn and winter months could the long, white tendrils be found on the beach and along tlic sea-wall, and in the creeks which run into the low-lying "meshes."

Twenty-five years ago a carpenter realised the commercial possibilities of the weed, and its popularity grew until it reached its zenith in 1906. In that year Queen, Alexandra bought a quantity, and forthwith it could command almost any prico amongst artificial florists. Two shillings a pound- was not an uncommon figure. The island was invaded by agents contracting to purchase the weed,* and Paris competed with London to obtain supplies. '. Then the Essex fishermen came and disturbed the contentment of Grain islanders. Interviewed, the pioneer of the industry stated that their neighbours had ruined it. "They go out to the deep water in the estuary with barbed wire fixed to their oyster "dredges, and they drag the weed up by the roots in the summer, when by rights it ought to be left to grow, same as other vegetation. "All we'can collect on the shore now is the roots they cast overboard. I need to pay my collectors as much as £20 or £30 a week, and whole truck-loads used to be sent from hero. You'd see as many as eighty people on the beach searching for it. and now hero's hardly a soul goes to look. These Essex fellow's drag it up in the summer; they undersoil us, pad they ruin the winter's harvest." Tho material referred to is neither seaweed nor any other vegetable substance, but is entirely animal in 'its nature. From spring till autumn myriads of living embryos are cast off from each colony, and are carried by currents over wide areas until thev settle down at the sea bottom, and start the formation of an immense number of new colonies. There is little fear of tho peculiar "seaweed" becoming exterminated, because from a single embryo A colony of many thousands of individual animals can be formed in 14 days.