GREAT SEA-WEED. 309 



open sea, as tliey travel through the straggling 

 stems, sink in height, and pass into smooth watci". 

 The number of living creatures of all Orders, 

 whoso existence intimately depends on the kelp, 

 is wonderful. A gi'eat volume might be written 

 describing the inhabitants of one of these beds of 

 sea-weed. Almost all the leaves, excepting those 

 that float, on the surface, are so thickly incrusted 

 with corallines as to be of a white colour. We 

 find exquisitely delicate structures, some inhabited 

 by simple hydra-like poh^ji, others by more or- 

 ganized kinds, and beautiful compound Ascidia3. 

 On the leaves, also, various patelliform shells, 

 Trochi, uncovered molluscs, and some bivalves are 

 attached. Innumerable 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, beautiful Holuthuria?, 

 Planarice, and crawling nereidous animals of a mul- 

 titude of forms, all fall out together. Often as I 

 recurred to a branch of the kelp, I never failed to 

 discover animals of new and curious stractures. 

 In Chiloe, where the kelp does not tlmve very 

 well, the numerovis shells, corallines, and Crustacea 

 are absent ; but thei'e yet remain a few of the 

 Flustracea^, and some compound Ascidia3 ; the lat- 

 ter, however, are of different species from those in 

 Tierra del Fuego : we here see the fucus possess- 

 ing a wider range than the animals which use it as 

 an abode. I can only compare these great aquatic 

 forests of the southern hemisphere with the ter- 

 restrial ones in the intertropical regions. Yet if 

 in any country a forest was 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 



