280 THE SARGASSO WEED. 



fact which either proves the common opinion 

 that this species never stray far from land to be 

 in error, or that some unknown land exists in 

 the vicinity." 



On the 31st of March, in latitude 22° north, 

 and longitude 4P west, the Sargasso weed was 

 first seen, a few pieces occasionally floating by 

 the ship. That these plants are produced within 

 the tropics, there can hardly be a cjuestion ; but 

 at what depth they vegetate is still involved in 

 obscurity : neither is it clearly ascertained why 

 the banks of weed should always occur in the 

 same places. The supposition that they proceed 

 with the Gulf Stream from the Gulf of Mexico 

 — whence the original name of gulf weed — is 

 now exploded. This weed is considered to extend 

 between the eighteenth and twenty-second pa- 

 rallels of north latitude, and the twenty-fifth and 

 fortieth meridians of west longitude. 



Mr. Neill justly observes, that " the gulf 

 stream would convey them rather to the banks 

 of Newfoundland than to the latitudes in which 

 they usually occur ; and it could not in any case 

 accumulate them to the south of the Azores."* 



* Greville's Algte Britanica;, 8vo. — The figure of the 

 SargassuDi vulgare in this work is coloured far too dark, and 

 does not seem to have been done from a recent specimen. 



