54 Questions Jbr Solution relating to Meteorology, 



It is, if I am not deceived, by placing them in this point of 

 view; by descending, in imagination, to the profoundest depths 

 of the ocean ; and by applying to the sea the theory which has 

 already given such a satisfactory explanation of the trade-winds, 

 that we shall succeed in throwing light on the subject which has 

 just occupied us. It will thus, in my opinion, be equally possi- 

 ble to conceive how currents of inconsiderable rapidity cross such 

 immense extent of sea ; how they are reflected and changed in 

 their course, while yet at a distance, by the sides of continents 

 and islands; and how they turn aside on approaching banks, 

 such as those of Agullas or Terra-neuva, above which there is 

 not less than sixty fathoms of water ! 



JSea of Weeds. — Among the phenomena of the ocean, which, 

 notwithstanding their antiquity, may yet become the subject of 

 curious investigation, I should be inclined to place that of the 

 Sea of Plants or the Sea of Weeds. 



These names are now applied to a zone of the Atlantic Ocean 

 situated to the west of the Azores. This zone, on an average, 

 is from forty to fifty leagues in width ; its extent in latitude is 

 ^5°; the space which it occupies being nearly equal in ex- 

 tent to the surface of France. It is entirely covered with plants 

 \Fucns natans). The Portuguese call it Mar de Sargasso ; Ovi- 

 edo, Praderias de Yerva (Prairies). In 1492, the companions 

 of Christopher Columbus were greatly alarmed by it, for they 

 conceived that they had reached the remotest limits of the na- 

 vigable ocean, and expected to be stopped by the sea-weed, as 

 their fabulous St Barandan had formerly been by the ice of the 

 Polar Regions. 



By examining a multitude of observations on the subject, de- 

 posited in the archives of the English Admiralty, in order to 

 determine the hmits of the Sea of Sargasso, Major Rennel 

 found that this great bank of fucus has undergone no change of 

 place, between the years 1776 and 1819, either in longitude or 

 latitude. This remarkable constancy in situation, M. Humboldt 

 has shewn to have existed as far back as the end of the fifteenth 

 century, in his remarks on the observations made by Columbus. 



Three different explanations have been advanced to account 

 for the existence of this sea of Fucus natans. Some are of opi- 



