THE IMPENETRABLE SEA 



any rate it is thought to have done so." Perhaps Sir 

 Arthur Shipley, in his book The Voyage of a Vice-chancellor^ 

 sums up the situation adequately when he says: ''An 

 amazing amount of fiction and nonsense has been written 

 about the sargasso-weed, but the truth is actually more 

 unbelievable." 



For the more we learn of this vast rotating wilderness 

 (or garden) of weed the more mysterious does it become. 



Although we have termed it a whirlpool it revolves 

 very slowly, and as imperceptibly to those who come 

 upon it as the starry heavens in their apparent motion 

 around the pole star. Astronomical comparisons come 

 to the mind as we try to get a mental picture of it. As the 

 vast size of the Nebula in Andromeda makes that sky 

 spectacle seem motionless when viewed through our 

 telescopes, so the size of the Sargasso Sea makes its 

 motion inappreciable, even to those who approach it — 

 the rate at which the vast whirlpool of weed and debris 

 turns is so extremely slow. Yet the currents keep it 

 gradually turning — a surface mass of weed, laced by 

 innumerable channels and populated by multitudes of 

 creatures : a wheeling archipelago at least eight times the 

 size of France. 



The weed is extremely buoyant, being the most highly 

 organized of the marine algae, Fucaceae — ''the rock 

 weeds". They are seaweeds which are usually attached 

 to stones by a discoid hold-fast. But when floating, as the 

 Sargassum bacciferum^ the weeds have long filiform stems, 

 much branched and with narrow, leaf-like fronds with 

 distinct midribs, and small air-bladders. These are like 

 solitary grapes, and have given rise to the common 

 names, "tropical grapes" and "grape-weed". The stems 

 were much used in South America at one time under the 

 name "goitre-sticks" for the cure of goitre. 



Although the weed is so buoyant it loses its buoyancy 

 after a period of from three to five years, when it sinks 

 and disintegrates. But even before that period expires an 



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