1834.] GREAT SEA-WEED. 239 



individual animals than any other station. There is one marine 

 production, which from its importance is worthy of a particular 

 history. It is the kelp, or Macrocystis pyrifera. This plant 

 grows on every rock from low- water mark to a great depth, 

 both on the outer coast and within the channels.* I believe, 

 during the voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, not one rock 

 near the surface was discovered which was not buoyed by this 

 floating weed. The good service it thus affords to vessels navi- 

 gating near this stormy land is evident ; and it certainly has 

 saved many a one from being wrecked. I know few things more 

 surprising than to see this plant growing and flourishing amidst 

 those great breakers of the western ocean, which no mass of rock, 

 let it be ever so hard, can long resist. The stem is round, 

 slimy, and smooth, and seldom has a diameter of so much as an 

 inch. A few taken together are sufficiently strong to support 

 the weight of the large loose stones, to which in the inland chan- 

 nels they grow attached ; and yet some of these stones were so 

 heavy that when drawn to the surface, they could scarcely be 

 lifted into a boat by one person. Captain Cook, in his second 

 voyage, says, that this plant at Kerguelen Land rises from a 

 greater depth than twenty-four fathoms ; " and as it does not 

 grow in a perpendicular direction, but makes a very acute angle 

 with the bottom, and much of it afterwards spreads many fathoms 

 on the surface of the sea, I am well warranted to say that some 

 of it grows to the length of sixty fatlioms and upwards." I do 

 not suppose the stem of any other plant attains so great a length 

 as three hundred and sixty feet, as stated by Captain Cook. 

 Captain Fitz Roy, moreover, found it growing f up from tiie 



* Its geographical range is remarkably -wide ; it is found from the 

 extreme southern islets near Cape Horn, as far north on the eastern coast 

 (according to information given me by Mr. Stokes) as lat. 43°, — but 

 on the western coast, as Dr. Hooker tells me, it extends to the R. San 

 Francisco in California, and perhaps even to Kamtscbatka. We thus have 

 an immense range in latitude ; and as Cook, who must have been well 

 acquainted with the species, found it at Kerguelen Land, no less than 140° 

 in longitude. 



t Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, vol. i. p. 363. — It appears that sea- 

 weed grows extremely quick. Mr. Stephenson found (Wilson's Voyage 

 round Scotland, vol. ii. p. 228) that a rock uncovered only at spring-tides, 

 which had been chiselled smooth in November, on the following May, that 

 is within six months afterwards, was thickly covered with Fucus digitatus 

 two feet, and F. esculeutus six feet, in length. 



