126 SEASIDE DIVINITY. 



thick and strong; their roots also are a mere 

 apparatus for attaching them to one spot, for 

 they, unlike most terrestrial plants, gain no sus- 

 tenance from the root, but from the fluid in 

 which they are immersed. 



There is nevertheless no small similitude be- 

 tween the two great classes of vegetable now re- 

 ferred to. Some districts of the bottom of the 

 ocean are covered with vegetation so luxuriant 

 that to such districts we might well apply the 

 term of marine forests. The submarine trees 

 bear in some respects a resemblance to many of 

 the most magnificent trees in an American forest; 

 for although not in any way rivalling them in 

 thickness or in solidity of structure, they are 

 their superiors in altitude. Captain Cook men- 

 tions that at Kerguelen Land the sea-weed was 

 of enormous length. In some of the compara- 

 tively shallow places the line did not reach the 

 bottom with twenty-five fathoms, and the depth 

 may have been much greater, but the sea-weed 

 grew up in those places from the bottom, not 

 only so as to reach the surface, but spreading 

 over it a profusion of large fronds, and some of 

 the plants were more than sixty fathoms or 360 

 feet in length. 



The geographical range of these immense sea 

 plants extends from the extreme southern islets 

 near Cape Horn to the 43 of latitude, a dis- 

 tance of more than 15 degrees and more than 900 

 miles, throughout that space affording food and 

 shelter to countless myriads of living creatures of 



