THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



weed mass arranges itself in a deiimte direction 

 with relation to the wind. 



We are in the southern hemisphere of the 

 earth beyond the point of the great continents 

 of Africa and Australia. The famous Macro- 

 cystis pyrifera constitutes this sea-weed forest. 

 This giant sea-weed raises its thin stem up four 

 hundred and fifty feet long, only twenty-seven 

 feet less than the height of the proud cross on 

 the tip of the Cologne cathedral above the level 

 of the Rhine, until at last the palm like leaf- 

 work with golden brown leaves six feet long held 

 in balance by pear shaped air bladders, unfolds 

 itself on the water mirror. The highest 

 tree outside the ocean, Eucalyptus amygdalina 

 of Australia, is scarcely of an equal height. 

 There have been, however, reports of giant sea- 

 weeds that have measured one hundred and fifty 

 feet greater than this measurement, statements 

 that may well be taken with some reservations. 

 In Behring Strait the Nereocystis similarly un- 

 folds itself, the sword shaped leaves of which 

 alone are thirty feet long; the swim bladder 

 must measure six feet if it is to hold such a 

 frond in balance on a thin thread-like stem, 

 ^hree hundred feet long. A picture of the prim- 

 itive world suddenly appears at the same time 

 out of the floating mist of such a landscape. 

 In the dim twilight of the creation day the first 

 land rose out of the luke-warm sea in exactly 

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