112 GULF WEED. 



31|-" N. and 87r W. it was very plentiful^ occur- 

 ring' in long- lines from one to fifty yards in width^ 

 extending" in the direction of the wind. Some pieces 

 which were hooked up furnished on being' shaken 

 numbers of a minute univalve shell (Litiopa), many 

 small fish — especially pipe-fish (Syngnathus), — 

 and numerous Crustacea (of which Planes minuta was 

 the most plentiful), while several dehcate zoophytes 

 were encrusted or attached to the weed. In short 

 each little patch of g'ulf Aveed seemed a world in 

 itself, aifordinof the shelter of a home to hundreds of 

 minute and wonderful animals.* 



Sept. 29th. — AVith only another day's supply of 

 fi-esh water on board, we were g-lad this morning- to 

 have the islands of Pico and Fayal in sig'ht. The 

 view, as we closed the land, standing" in from the 

 south-westward for the roadstead of Horta, was 

 very fine — on our left we had the beautiful island of 



* The gulf weed is still regarded as of questionable origin. 

 Has it — unlike all other sea weeds — always existed as a floating 

 plant, or has it been detached by storms from the bottom of the 

 sea and carried by the currents of the ocean into the well defined 

 region it now occupies and out of which it is never met with in any 

 great quantity? Without entering into proofs, the principal of which 

 are its not yet having been found attached to the shore, and the 

 invariable absence of fructification — it seems probable that those 

 botanists are in the right who consider the gulf weed {Sargassum 

 bacciferum) to be merely an abnormal condition, propagating 

 itself by shoots, of S. vulgare, which in its normal state grows 

 upon the shores of the Atlantic and its islands. — See note by Dr. 

 J. D. Hooker in Memoirs of Geological Survey of Great Britain, 

 vol. i. p. 349. 



