THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. 207 



Whenever a circuit of waters is thus formed we have every 

 reason, from tidal and other analogies, to look for an inter- 

 mediate or central space, comparatively calm and motionless. 

 And such a space is actually ascertained to exist within this 

 great Ocean whirlpool. The ' Mar de Sargasso,' as the Spanish 

 navigators termed the central portion of the Atlantic, stretch- 

 ing westwards from the Canaries and Cape Verd Islands a 

 surface fifteen times greater than that of Great Britain 

 may be described as a vast stagnant pool, receiving the drift 

 seaweed, which the surrounding currents fling into it, and 

 generating on its calm surface what has been well called e an 

 oceanic meadow ' of seaweed, the fucus natans of botanists. 

 It is in this tract of sea that we find such wonderful species 

 of fuci as the Macrocystis pyrifera having stems from 

 1,000 to 1,500 feet in length and but a finger's size in thick- 

 ness, branching upwards into filaments like packthread. This 

 vast domain of marine vegetable life is the receptacle, as 

 indeed are the waters of the ocean generally, of an equal pro- 

 fusion of animal existence from the minute luminiferous 

 organisms, which (to borrow Humboldt's phrase) ' convert 

 every wave into a crest of light,' to those larger forms of 

 life, many of which derive nutriment from the waters alone, 

 thus richly impregnated with living animal matter. Eeason 

 and imagination are equally confounded by the effort to 

 conceive these hosts of individual existences cette richesse 

 effrayante as Cuvier terms it generated or annihilated 

 at every passing instant of time. No scheme of numbers can 

 reach them, even by approximation ; and science is forced to 

 submit its deductions to the general law, that all the ma- 

 terials of organic life are in a state of unceasing change, dis- 

 placement and replacement under new forms and altered 

 functions for purposes which we must believe to be wisely 

 designed, but which transcend all human intelligence. 



It is interesting to possess a record of this Mar de Sargasso 



