INHABITANTS OF THE SEA- WEED. 91 



ulated limbs and hard coverings;, and luminous creatures, 

 as Salpce, of which vast gelatinous shoals are met with at sea, 

 associated in a round mass like a chain, transparent, and of 

 beautiful colors, of which, we are told, that during a journey 

 of nearly eight hundred miles, they were thickly abundant 

 throughout the track of the ship in the ocean. Each por- 

 tion of the vast masses of floating seaweed consists — when 

 carefully examined — of a little densely populated world, be- 

 ing crowded with living beings, all active and full of bust- 

 ling animation — strange-shaped little fishes, bright sea-slugs, 

 tiny shells of the nautilus tribe, grotesque sea-spiders, and 

 whole gangs of odd crabs, jelly-fish, and transparent shrimps. 

 " The number of living creatures of all orders," observes 

 Darwin, " whose existence intimately depends on the kelp 

 (marine plants) is wonderful. A great volume might be 

 written describing the inhabitants of one of these beds of 

 seeweed. Almost all the leaves, excepting those on the sur- 

 face, are so thickly encrusted with coralines as to be of a 

 white color. We find exquisitely delicate structures, some 

 inhabited by simple hydra-like Polypi, others by more or- 

 ganized kinds and beautiful compound Ascidice (from the 

 Greek ctskos, a bottle or pouch, these little molluscs resem- 

 bling sacs everywhere closed, except at two orifices.) In- 

 numerable Crustacea frequent every part of the plant. On 

 shaking the great entangled roots, a pile of small fish, shells, 

 cuttle-fish, crabs of all orders, sea-eggs, star-fish, and animals 

 of a multitude of forms all fall out together. Often as I re- 

 curred to a branch of the kelp, I never failed to discover 

 animals of new and curious structures. I can only compare 

 these great aquatic forests of the Southern Hemisphere with 

 the terrestrial ones in the intertropical regions. Yet if in any 

 country a forest were destroyed, I do not believe nearly so 

 many species of animals would perish as would here from the 

 destruction of the kelp. Amidst the leaves of this plant 

 numerous species of fish live, which nowhere else could find 



