260 FARLOW— VEGETATION OF SARGASSO SEA. [April 24, 



species. This latter opinion is the one held by most recent writers. 



The question is not as simple as it seems at first sight. It may 

 be asked whether Sargassum bacciferum occurs in other places than 

 the Sargasso Sea and its immediate vicinity. What has been con- 

 sidered to be this species has been reported to occur in New Zealand, 

 Australia, Java and various places in the Pacific and Indian Oceans 

 as well as Valparaiso but only scattered specimens have been found 

 and there is no evidence whatever that there is more than one Sar- 

 gasso Sea in the world and it may be questioned whether all the 

 specimens supposed to be 5". bacciferum from other regions are 

 really the same as the Atlantic form. I have a specimen marked 

 New Zealand which seems to be the real gulf-weed but the data on 

 the label are scanty and I do not feel sure that the locality is cor- 

 rectly given. Von Marten's theory that the gulf-weed originated in 

 the Indian Ocean and was carried by currents round the Cape of 

 Good Hope to the Sargasso Sea has nothing to support it, nor can 

 the theory of Ed. Forbes that the floating gulf-weed is the survival 

 of Sargassum growing on the submerged Atlantis be seriously con- 

 sidered. 



As a waif, or straggler, the gulf-weed is occasionally deposited 

 on the shores of northwestern Europe but in Great Britain, at least, 

 it must be very rare for in his Phycologia Britannica Harvey was 

 obliged to draw his figure of L. bacciferum from an American, not 

 a British specimen. On the east American coast specimens of the gulf- 

 weed are very rare. The only specimen which I have is a fragment 

 washed ashore at Bath, Long Island. Some years ago I was told by 

 a sea captain that there was a bank of gulf-weed off Nantucket but 

 I have been unable to obtain any confirmation of this statement. 

 Even if there is such a bank, the chances are that it is composed of 

 S. filipendula, which is very abundant on the adjacent shore of Cape 

 Cod. 



As has been said, by far the greater part of the gulf-weed masses 

 is composed of S. bacciferum. That it is exclusively so is not true. 

 Agardh states that 6*. Hystrix is found with 6^. bacciferum and 

 recently Boergesen has reported the same species near the Danish 

 West Indies ; S. vulgar e, a very common attached species of the 

 West Indies has also been found with the gulf-weed. The mixture 



