29 
ChAT GER IV: 
THE PLANTS OF THE SEA. 
THE flora of the ocean well deserves the attention of the botanist, 
the philosopher, and the artist, equally with that of the land. There 
exist in the midst of the waters, whether salt or fresh, numbers of 
plants curious, useful, or picturesque, which present such a great 
variety of forms, that the landscape, if we may be allowed the 
word, is neither less interesting nor less diversified than that of 
countries where the sun has induced a luxuriant tropical vegeta- 
tion. However, the vegetable kingdom has fewer representatives 
in the sea than upon the land, and the size of the terrestrial vegeta- 
tion is incomparably grander than that of the ocean. But nature 
has given to the sea a compensation for this, as we shall see, in 
creating polypi, which are animalcules living in colonies, and are 
more or less of a vegetable character. Thus another kind of 
flora is produced, more complicated, more animated, and more 
astonishing. These existences are, so to speak, animals in the 
shape of plants, and minerals in the form of animals. 
The marine flora belongs almost exclusively to one class of 
vegetables: that of the a/g@, or sea-weeds. Linnzus only enu- 
merated fifty of these plants, but we now are acquainted with more 
than 2,000. In the seas around this island alone 105 genera, 
including 370 species, are known. 
The sea flora is most numerous and most brilliant in these 
temperate zones, and gradually loses its richness as we approach 
the equator or the poles. 
The plants of the sea are often of a size altogether micro- 
scopical. Freycinet and Turrel, when on board the corvette La 
Créole, in the neighbourhood of Tajo, in the isle of Lucon, observed 
an extent of thirty-five square miles tinted a bright red. This colour 
proved to be due to the presence of a minute plant, so small that 
