MARINE PLANTS 



91 



mh\ 







in the discursive inquiry to those features which seem to 

 throw Hg'ht on the general history of hfe. The first matter 

 to be noted is that now, as in all the past ages of the earth, 

 the creatures which tenant the sea are in organization much 

 inferior to those dwelling on the land. This is true, not only 

 of the organic forms as a whole, but essentially so of every 

 separate group of animals and plants. Thus in the vegetable 

 king'dom, the truly marine 

 species contain no tlower- 

 incr forms; none which 

 have devised the function- 

 ally and structurally sepa- 

 rated parts of root, stem, 

 and leaves, or which com- 

 bine their offices to afford 

 the well-ordered life of the 

 familiar vegetation of the 

 land. Although the sea- 

 floor is generally covered 

 by a coating of detritus far 

 richer in the elements of 



A representative of a group which abounded in the 

 plant crrOWth than the SUr- early geological periods, but which is rare in the seas of 



the present time. 



face of the land, it does 



not serve the lowly marine plants as a soil ; they send no 

 roots into it ; they take no nourishment from it, but derive 

 all their sustenance from the water which envelops their 

 stems and fronds. Although there are many diverse forms 

 of marine vegetables, the species are generally small and 

 weak structures; only one group, the J/acrorys//s, is known 

 to attain any great bulk. This tenant of the Pacific and 

 Antarctic Oceans has a stem extendimj from the bottom of 



Calyx, Arms, and a Part of the Stem of a Metacrlnus — one 

 of the Sea Lilies 



