28 LAMINAKIACEiE. 



cle, or hiding among the leaves while he pursues his fishing. 

 The cord-like stem which anchors this floating tree must 

 be of considerable strength ; and, accordingly, we find it 

 used as a fishing-line by the natives of the coast. But great 

 as is the length of this sea-weed, it is exceeded by the Ma- 

 crocystis, though the leaves and air-vessels of that plant are 

 of small dimensions. In the Nereocystis the stem is un- 

 branched ; in Macrocystis it branches as it approaches the 

 surface, and afterwards divides by repeated forkings, each 

 division bearing a leaf, until there results a floating mass of 

 foliage some hundreds of square yards in superficial extent. 

 It is said that the stem of this plant is sometimes 1500 feet 

 in length. These are the most lengthy of the family. There 

 are others whose fronds would weigh more. The Lessonim, 

 which inhabit the deeper parts of the Laminarian zone in the 

 latitude of Cape Horn, and along the shores of Chili, have 

 branching trunks of considerable diameter and length, each 

 branch crowned with bunches of long ribbon-like leaves, and 

 the whole plant resembling a submarine arborescent aloe of 

 large size. The Ecklonice, a noble genus with pinnated 

 fronds, may be compared to submarine palm-trees. The 

 best known species, E. buccinalis, the trumpet weed of South 

 Africa, has a stem often more than twenty feet long, two 

 inches in diameter at the base, where it is solid, gradually 

 widening upwards and becoming hollow, and crowned with a 

 fan-shaped cluster of leaves, each twelve feet long or more. 

 The stem of this plant when dried is often used in the colony 

 as a siphon ; and by the native herdsmen is formed into a 

 trumpet, for collecting the cattle at evening. But perhaps 

 the most remarkable of the order are the arctic forms, Tlta- 

 lassiophyllum and Agarum, both furnished with broad leaves 

 regularly pierced with holes at short distances. In the first 

 of these genera the sieve-like fronds grow, in spiral order, 

 round a branching shrubby stem ; in the latter the fronds are 

 solitary, as in our own simple-leaved species of Laminaria. 



The order contains about fifty species, comprised under 

 three genera, and characteristic of the colder climates both 

 north and south. Macrocystis, Laminaria and Ecklonia 

 extend into the tropics. 



