SARGASSO WEEDS AND WAVES 19 



tants were rare and began to observe instead of 

 merely to see them. There were three kinds of 

 hydroids, — the pahiis, the trees and the spiked 

 clubs, all superlatively dainty and elegant, foresting 

 these diminutive roof gardens of the sea. Here and 

 there were more formal plantings, row upon row of 

 beautiful ivory or alabaster chalices, from which 

 sprang severe fountains of tentacles, — minute bryo- 

 zoans or moss animals, — all arranged just so, like 

 the alabaster vases of Italian gardens. The bryo- 

 zoan beds were still exquisite when their occupants 

 were dead and gone. The sere and autumn of the 

 moss animals' year left a mosaic of thousands of 

 flattened hexagons as perfect as honeycombs, as 

 translucent as age-old moonstone. 



These serried ranks of the bryozoan folk are all 

 flattened against their world of weed, but the wav- 

 ering groves of slender hydroids are connected at 

 their base by rootlets or stolons which wander and 

 weave about the fronds and the bladders. It is 

 hard to say what are the relationships of a 

 group of these little hydroid palms. Is the 

 tall animal flower at the smiimit of the berry- 

 like float the child or parent of the one be- 

 hind, and these three which stand up tall in a 

 row like the masts of a Lilliputian wireless station, 

 — are they cousins or brothers? If however, we are 

 confused at this relationship, what can we say of 

 the actual transition from one generation to an- 

 other, — as astounding as it would be for a cat to 

 have geraniums instead of kittens, and the plant 

 offspring to scatter puppies in place of seeds! 



