420 Seaweed 



distance off shore proportionate to the steepness of 

 the descent of the island's base. Within its limits 

 no sea can rise. The fiercest waves that ever roll 

 make no impression upon this natural breakwater, 

 whose piles are so flexible that one may tie them in 

 a knot, and so slender that they may be encircled by 

 a hand clasp. Through the dim recesses of this won- 

 derful forest the fish wander at their ease and in perfect 

 shelter from whatever it is that fish, surface fish that 

 is, dislike in a storm. In among its foliage they find 

 infinite stores of food, yet in its deepest confines there 

 is safe shelter for the young fry that would otherwise 

 soon be annihilated. And for the navigator it often 

 marks outlying rock points that would otherwise 

 be passed unobserved, although it certainly prevents 

 the sea breaking over them in a gale. 



Occasionally immense masses of it are torn by the 

 violence of the waves from the root-holds on the out- 

 lying fringe of the forest and take a long, long journey 

 by the aid of the sea and current, carrying with them 

 a microcosm of fish life to breed and multiply in some 

 far-distant land from their original habitat. Which 

 may account for the prevalence of precisely the same 

 fish in places so very widely separated. Take it 

 altogether, it is a curious plant, drawing no sustenance 

 through its roots, but merely anchoring in obedience 

 to some strange plant instinct for fear of being washed 

 away, and subsisting entirely upon what it draws 

 direct from the limpid but bitterly salt waters of 

 the sea. 



And lastly, not because of the exhaustion of the 

 subject, but because I can only deal with deep-sea 

 weed ; that wonderfully rapid growing weed which 

 appears as it were spontaneously in any part of the 

 ocean where there is a solid substance to which it can 



