SEAWEEDS 89 



patient reader, will hardly stir his imagination. But 

 the reader who stays to think and read between the lines 

 should not fail to have his pulse quickened by thoughts 

 almost too deep for words. He will form a mental 

 picture of a weed-strewn shore, with the waves breaking 

 upon it. At one moment he will imagine a calm sea 

 lapping the beach gently ; at another he will almost hear 

 the roaring breakers. And as he pictures some of the 

 greater Seaweeds moving rhythmically and easily in 

 the ebb and flow of the waters, he will marvel at the 

 wonderful adaptations which enable them to hold their 

 own amidst such turbulence, and even profit by it. 

 Nor, when he contemplates the facts of structure, 

 growth, and reproduction, will he fail to ask himself, 

 " What is at the back of it all ? Here," he will say, 

 " are ceaseless activity, teeming life, strange devices, 

 and what might have seemed insuperable difficulties 

 surmounted. How can I account for them ? Surely all 

 these things do not happen fortuitously. Do they not 

 rather indicate that Life, instead of being, according 

 to Spencerian speculation, an adjustment of inner and 

 outer relations, is the Adjuster, the Adapter, the silent 

 Surmounter of obstacles, always directive in its activities, 

 and always securing the highest possible manifestation 

 in a given environment V 



In the flora of the sea one could hardly expect a greater 

 advance than we have observed. The development of 

 the Algse accords well with their environment, and the 

 Seaweeds are successful colonists of their habitat. 

 What more is needed ? It is the colonizing of the land 

 that has led to the most striking and diverse specializa- 

 tions of plant forms. 



12 



