SEAWEED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 629, 20 July 1951, Page 13

SEAWEED

SEAWEEDS AND THEIR USES, by. VJ. Chapman; Methuen and Co, Ltd. Ené@lish price, 25/-., NE who sets out to produce on such a subject as seaweeds a book "acceptable to the general reader" and "sufficiently comprehensive to be of value to the specialist" is liable to fall between two stools. Professor Chapman, of Auckland, does not fall. As a special-ist-a very important specialist in this field in the war-he sits very comfortably on his stool and pours forth 253 pages of information, literary, historical, economic, geographical, chemical, -biological, culinary, gastronomical, and backs it all up with 20 pages of bibliography and 20 pages of plates. Somewhat bewildered by it all, this general reader turns for his present purpose to some inconsequential points, I don’t like the learned professor’s literary style; e.g., if a "big fillip" can come to an industry, it should "come" rather than "eventuate" (p. 40); and, greatly daring, I don’t like his scientific style when he quotes a newspaper on the value of seaweed for cows, or even for "an old cow" (p. 126), or by implication connects casually seaweed meal in their diet with a herd’s world record of | milk production. Nor do I like the pro-| fessor’s too frequent use of exclamation marks, nor the occasion for them! But I am not ungrateful to the author. His drawings and descriptions are very helpful to a dweller by the seashore; I can now use seaweed in my garden with more authority; I have some recipes for cooking it-or some of it-if I want to, and a warning what to expect; and I have a mine of other interesting information, though the "seaméal" I have on the pantry shelf is not in the index. | Finally, I think I find in this volume a case for still more-reseatch on New Zealand seaweeds-their culture, har- |

vesting and use.

L.J.

W.