The calcined ashes of sea weed, used in the manufacture of glass. This is a dark color alkaline substance, which, in a furnace, vitrifies and becomes transparent.
Word of the Day: Catachrestical
Kelp
Encyclopedia Britannica
KELP (Fr., varech) is produced by the incineration of various kinds of sea-weed {Algx) obtainable in great abundance on the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland, and the coast of Brittany in France. It is prepared from the deep-sea tangle {Laminaria digitata), sugar wrack {L.
saccharind), knobbed wrack (Fucus nodosus), black wrack (F. serratus), and bladder wrack (F. vesiculosus). The Laminarias yield what is termed drift-weed kelp, obtainable only when cast up on the coasts by storms or other causes. The species of Fucus, on the other hand, growing within the tidal range, are cut from the rocks at low water, and are therefore known as cut-weeds. In the preparation of kelp, the weeds are first dried in the sun, and are then collected into shallow pits on the ground and burned till they form a fused mass, which while still hot is sprinkled with water in order to break it up into convenient pieces. A ton of kelp is obtained from 20 to 22 tons of wet sea-weed. The average composition may vary as follows :—sulphate of potash, 10 to 12 per cent.; potassium chloride, 20 to 25 per cent.; sodium carbonate, 5 per cent.; other soda and magnesia salts, 15 to 20 per cent.; and insoluble ash from 40 to 50 per cent. The relative richness in iodine of different samples varies largely, good drift kelp yielding as much as 10 to 15 lb per ton of 22⅛ cwts., whilst cut-weed kelp will not give more than 3 to 4 ff>. The rude manner in which kelp is prepared causes much of the iodine to be volatilized; but Mr E. C. C. Stanford has successfully introduced a process for treating sea-weeds by destructive distillation, whereby the whole of that valuable body is saved. See Iodine....
Previous to the introduction of the Leblanc process for the manufacture of sodium carbonate, kelp was the principal source of that substance, as well as a source of potassium salts, and consequently was a raw material of much importance in chemical industries. About the beginning of the 19th century the value of the kelp prepared on the coast and islands of the west of Scotland was not less than £400,000 per annum, representing 20,000 tons of kelp. With the gradual introduction and improvement of the Leblanc process, and the reduction of the duty on salt and other causes, the value of kelp decreased from £20 and upwards to about £2 a ton, a price altogether unremunerative. Towards the middle of the century, however, a new impetus was given to the trade by the rise of the manufacture of iodine, of which kelp was at first the only commercial source. The introduction of Chili saltpetre (caliche) as a source of iodine, and the development of the Stassfurth salt-mines for the production of potash salts, have in their turn had a depressing influence on the kelp manufacture, and it is only by the most careful utilization of all the salts contained in the kelp, and the use of most approved methods of preparing the material, that the industry is continued as a remunerative undertaking. The production of kelp in the British Islands varies greatly from year to year. It may be stated to average about 7000 tons, at a value of about £4 per ton. Two-thirds of this quantity is produced in Ireland, and the remainder on the Scottish coast and islands. The quantity produced in France is probably now somewhat less than the British yield.
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 14, p. 29
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A small California food fish (Heterostichus rostratus), living among kelp. The name is also applied to species of the genus Platyglossus.
An imaginary spirit of the waters, in the form of a horse. [Local and vulgar.]
An imaginary spirit of the waters, horselike in form, vulgarly believed to warn, by preternatural noises and lights, those who are to be drowned.
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