SEA-Nettle. See ANIMAL-Flower.

SEA-Pie, or Oyster-Catcher. See HÆMATOPUS, Ornithology Index.

SEA-Plants, are those vegetables that grow in salt-water within the shores of the sea. The old botanists divided SEA divided these into three classes. 1. The first class, according to their arrangement, contained the algae, the fuci, the sea-mosses or confervas, and the different species of sponges. 2. The second contained substances of a hard texture, like stone or horn, which seem to have been of the same nature with what we call zoophyta, with this difference, that we refer sponges to this class and not to the first. The third class was the same with our lithophyta, comprehending corals, madrepora, &c. It is now well known that the genera belonging to the second and third of these classes, and even some referred to the first, are not vegetables, but animals, or the productions of animals. See CORALLINA, MADREPORA, SPONGIA. Sea-plants, then, properly speaking, belong to the class of cryptogamia, and the order of algae; and, according to Bonnare, are all comprehended under the genus of fucus. We may also add several species of the ulva and conferva and the sargazo. The fuci and marine ulvae are immersed in the sea, are seafire, and without root. The marine conferva are either seafire or floating. The sargazo grows beyond foundations.

As some species of the fucus, when dried and preserved, are extremely beautiful, the curious, and especially those who prosecute the study of botany, must be anxious to know the best method of preserving them, without destroying their colour and beauty. The following method is recommended by M. Mauduyt. Take a sheet of paper, or rather of pasteboard, and cover it with varnish on both sides; and having rowed in a boat to the rock where the fucus abounds, plunge your varnished paper into the water, and, detaching the fucus, receive it upon the paper. Agitate the paper gently in the water, that the plant may be properly spread over it; and lift them up together softly out of the water: then fix down with pins the strong stalks, that they may not be displaced, and leave the plant lying upon the varnished paper to dry in the open air. When it is fully dry, the different parts will retain their position, and the plant may be preserved within the leaves of a book. To free it from the slime and salt which adhere to it, wash it gently in fresh water, after being removed from the rock on which it grew.