174 WHAT MR. DARWIN SAW. 



INDIAN OCEAN. 



son. 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 afterward 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 fathoms and upward." I do not sup- 

 pose 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 up from the 

 greater depth of forty-five fathoms. The beds of this sea- 

 weed, even when not of sreat breadth, make excellent natu- 



/ O ' 



ral floating breakwaters. It is quite curious to see, in an ex- 

 posed harbor, how soon the waves from the open sea, as they 

 travel through the straggling stems r sink in height and pass 

 into smooth water. 



The number of living creatures whose ^existence intimate- 

 ly depends on the kelp is wonderful. A great 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 color. On shaking the great entangled 

 roots, a pile of small fish, shells, cuttle-fish, crabs, sea -eggs, 

 star-fish, etc., all fall out together. Often as I went back to 

 a branch of the kelp, I never failed to discover animals of 

 new and curious structures. I can only compare these great 

 water forests of the southern hemisphere with the land for- 

 ests in the intertropical regions. Yet, if in any country a 

 forest was destroyed, I do not believe nearly so many species 



