48 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



in the genuine writings of the Stagyrite,* the same opinion 

 is retained regarding the absence of wind, and Aristotle 

 attempts to explain a false notion, or, as it seems to me, more 

 correctly speaking, a fabulous mariner's story, by an hypo- 

 thesis regarding the depth of the sea. The stormy sea be- 

 tween Gades and the Islands of the Blest (Cadiz and the 

 Canaries) can in truth in no way be compared with the sea, 

 which lies between the tropics, ruffled only by the gentle 

 trade- winds (vents alises}, and which has been very charac- 

 teristically named by the Spaniardsf %H Golfo de las Damas. 



From very careful personal researches and from compari- 

 son of the logs of many English and French vessels, I am 

 led to believe that the old and very indefinite expression 

 Mar de Sargasso, refers to two fucus banks, the larger of 

 which is of an elongated form, and is the easternmost one, 

 lying between the parallels of 19 and 34, in a meridian 7 

 westward of the Island of Corvo, one of the Azores ; while 

 the smaller and westernmost bank is of a roundish form, and 

 is found between Bermuda and the Bahama Islands (lat. 

 25 31, long. 66 74). The principal diameter of the 

 small bank, which is traversed by ships sailing from Baxo de 

 Plata (Caye d' Argent,) northward of St. Domingo to the 

 Bermudas, appears to me to have a N. 60 E. direction. A 

 transverse band of fucus natans, extending in an east-westerly 

 direction between the latitudes of 25 and 30, connects the 

 greater with the smaller bank. I have had the pleasure of 

 seeing these views adopted by my lamented friend Major 

 Rennell, and confirmed, in his great work on Currents, by 

 many new observations.^; The two groups of sea-weed, 

 together with the transverse band uniting them, constitute 

 the Sargasso Sea of the older writers, and collectively occupy 

 an area equal to six or seven times that of Germany. 



The vegetation of the ocean thus offers the most remark- 

 able example of social plants of a single species. On the 

 main land the Savannahs or grass plains of America, the 

 heaths (ericeta\ and the forests of Northern Europe and Asia, 



* Aristot. MeteoroL, ii. 1, 14. 



f" Acosta, ffistoria natural y moral de las Indias, lib. iii. cap. 4. 



Compare Humboldt, Relation historique, t. i. p. 202, and Examen 

 Critique, t. iii. pp. 68-69, with Rennell's Investigation of the Currents 

 of the Atlantic Ocean, 1832, p. 184. 



