EATANS. 129 



plant are of small dimensions. In the Nereocystis, the 

 stem is unbranched ; in Macroci/stis, 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 fifteen hundred feet in length.* 



Mr Darwin,-[- speaking of this colossal alga at the 

 southern extremity of America, where it growls ujj from 

 a depth of forty-five fathoms to the surface, at a very 

 oblique angle, says, that its beds, even when of no great 

 breadth, make excellent natural floating breakwaters. It 

 is quite curious to mark how soon the great waves from 

 the ocean, in passing through the straggling stems into 

 an exposed harbour, sink in elevation, and become 

 smooth. 



Such an enormous length is not without parallel in 

 terrestrial plants. Familiar to every one, — from the 

 schoolboy, over w^hom it hangs in terrorem, upward, — as 

 is the common cane, with its slenderness, its flexibility, 

 and its flinty, polished surface, — how few are aware that 

 it is only a small part of the stem of a palm-tree, which, 

 in its native forest, reached a length of five hundred feet ! 

 These ratans form a tribe of plants growing in the dense 

 jungles of continental and insular India, which, though 

 they resemble grasses or reeds in their appearance, are 

 true trees of the palm kind. They are exceedingly slender, 

 never increasing in thickness, though immensely in length ; 



* Harvey's Marine Algce, p. 28. f Nat. Voyage, xi. 



I 



