THE MACROCYSTIS PYRIFERA. 393 
every year several small vessels are sent from Jersey to the 
coast of Brittany, to fetch cargoes of sea-weeds for the farmers 
of that island. 
The largest of indigenous sea-weeds are the Laminaria 
saccharina and digitata, or the sugary and fingered oar-weeds. 
Their stout woody stems, and broad tough glossy leaves of 
dark olive-green, often twelve or fourteen feet long, must be 
familiar to every one who has sojourned on the coast. When 
gliding over their submerged groves in a boat, their great fronds 
floating like streamers in the water afford the interesting 
spectacle of a dense submarine thicket, through whose palm-like 
tops the fishes swim in and out, emulating in activity the 
birds of our forests. 
But our native oar-weeds, large as they seem with regard to 
the other fuci among which they grow, are mere pygmies when 
compared with the gigantic species which occur in the colder 
Beas. 
one of the members of this family grow in the tropical 
waters, but they extend to the utmost polar limits, and seem to 
increase in size and multiplicity of form as they advance to the 
higher latitudes. The northern hemisphere has generally dif- 
ferent genera from the southern. To the former belong the 
gigantic Alarias with their often forty feet Jong and several 
feet broad fronds, the singularly perforated Thalassophyta, and 
the far-spreading Nereocystis, which is only found in the 
Northern Pacific; while the genera Macrocystis and Lessonia 
are denizens of the Southern Ocean. 
In the numerous channels and bays of Tierra del Fuego, the 
enormous and singular Macrocystis pyrifera is found in such 
incredible masses as to excite the astonishment of every traveller. 
“On every rock,” says Mr. Darwin, perhaps the best observer of 
nature that ever visited those dreary regions, and certainly their 
most poetical describer, “the plant grows from low-water mark 
to a great depth, both on the outer coast and within the channels. 
I believe, during the voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, not 
one rock near the surface was discovered which was not buoyed by 
this floating weed. The good service it thus affords to vessels 
navigating near this stormy land is evicent, and it certainly 
bas saved many a one from being wreckel. I know few 
things more surprising than to see this plant growing and 
