368 FREAKS OF PLANT LIFE. 



be compared for beauty with the deeply-cut and 

 infinitely diversified and subdivided fronds of the 

 larger ferns. All that the palms may claim for 

 excess in height, or bulk of trunk, over the tree 

 ferns, is amply compensated in the latter by the 

 beauty and grace of their crown of feathery fronds. 



Seaweeds are the most gigantic of cryptogamic 

 plants, and of these the most noteworthy is the large 

 Macrocystis of the antarctic seas {Macrocystcs pyri- 

 fera). D'Urville says that it grows in eight, ten, and 

 even fifteen brasses of water, from which depth it 

 ascends obliquely, and floats along the surface nearl)^ 

 as far ; this gives a length of 200 feet. Dr. Hooker 

 (now Sir Joseph) says: "In the Falkland Islands,. 

 Cape Horn, and Kcrguelcn's Land; where all the 

 harbours arc so belted with its masses that a boat 

 can hardly be forced through, it generally rises from 

 eight to twelve fathom water, and the fronds extend 

 upwards of one hundred feet upon the surface. We 

 seldom, however, had opportunities of measuring the 

 largest specimens, though washed up entire on the 

 shore ; for on the outer coasts of the I'alkland 

 Islands, where the beach is lined for miles with 

 entangled cables of Macrocystis, much thicker than 

 the human body, and twined of innumerable strands 

 of stems coiled together by the rolling action of the 

 surf, no one succeeded in unravelling from the mass 

 any one piece upwards of seventy or eighty feet 



