The circumstances under which this plant was found must have made Harvey's mouth water.
"My specimen," he writes, "was picked up by a lady who accidentally landed for a few hours in a little harbour, into which the ship put during a gale, and she describes the shore as covered with the most wonderful profusion of plants and animals. She got all the pocket handkerchiefs of the party and filled them with what came first to hand, and in this hasty way picked up sixty different kinds of sponges, forty of which are new species, and several Algae, among which was the above described beauty. Her husband (a captain) is going out again, and promises to gather all he can meet with. Don't I hope he may have a run in again in a squall!"
Harvey now commenced the publication of the first of his larger works on seaweeds—the classical Phycologia Britannica, a series of 360 coloured quarto plates, drawn on stone by his own hand, representing all the species then known to inhabit the British Isles, and accompanied by suitable letterpress: the whole taking five years to complete. This work represented an immense advance in the knowledge of British sea-weeds, and, by the beauty and excellence of its plates, did much to popularize the study of these interesting plants.
In the following year he began his Nereis Australis, or Algae of the Southern Ocean. This was the first fruits of a comprehensive scheme of publication, which in its entirety was to "form a compendious picture of the vegetation of the ocean," the Nereis Australis being followed by a similar Nereis Tropica and Nereis Borealis; but only a section of the scheme was carried out, and publication stopped with the issue of 120 pages of letterpress and fifty coloured plates, drawn as usual by Harvey himself. In 1849 he issued The Sea-side Book, a popular account of the natural history of the sea-shore, which ran through several editions.
About this time he secured an additional appointment which, while it added to his professional duties, also increased his opportunities for research. The Royal Dublin Society, founded in 1731 for the improvement of husbandry, manufactures, and other useful arts and sciences, and aided by considerable government
