ITS GEOGRAPHICAL RANGE. 139 



over a wide extent of the Atlantic. The polar 

 limits, commonly assigned to this weed, are 

 22 N., (noted as its southern boundary in 1790,) 

 arid 40 N. Its eastern limit is uncertain, but 

 probably about 34 W. ; and a ship meets with 

 it sooner, and in larger quantities, as she sails 

 most to the eastward, within those prescribed 

 boundaries. During a voyage from Bengal to 

 England, in the year 1832, I had this fucus in 

 sight from lat. 19 N., long. 38 W., to lat. 

 38 N. 



The vast collections of Sargasso-weed, seen 

 on the Atlantic, are supposed to be borne by a 

 circuitous current from the Gulf of Florida, or 

 the Bahama Isles. I have already noticed the 

 existence of the same species on the coast of 

 California. M. Bonnet believes, that it grows 

 at the bottom of the ocean it covers, and asserts, 



jointed tufts its fructification affords. But few examples, 

 also, are free from a coralline incrustation, which mostly 

 covers the vesicles, and which, when the latter are dried 

 and shrunk, continues to surround them with a minute 

 and elegant lace- or basket-work. Pelagic crabs, shrimps, 

 scilloeae, and barnacles, adhere to the weed in great num- 

 bers ; and amongst its fields we have occasionally taken 

 pipe-fish, (Syngnathus acus,) frog-fish, (Lophius histrio,) 

 dolphin, (Coryphcena,) sepiae of many kinds, and most of 

 the marine mollusks that infest the currents of tropical 

 seas. 



