THE COLDER TEMPERATE ZONE. 89 



mens which Dr. Hooker mentions were encountered in a 

 strait between two of the Crozet Islands, the stems of which, 

 from careful calculations, were believed to be about seven 

 hundred feet long. 



In the Falkland Islands, Cape Horn, and Kerguelen's 

 Land all the harbours are so belted with its masses, that a 

 boat can hardly be forced through ; it generally grows in 

 water from eight to twelve fathoms deep, the fronds ex- 

 tending " upwards of one hundred feet upon the surface." 



On the outer coast of the Falkland Islands, where the 

 beach is lined for miles with cables of entangled Macro- 

 cystu much thicker than the human body, we might have 

 supposed that it would have been easy to make exact mea- 

 surements of this wonderful plant by separating single spe- 

 cimens from the mass ; but nothing could be further from 

 the truth than such a supposition; for these entangled 

 monstrous cables are "twined of innumerable strands of 

 stems, coiled together by the rolling action of the surf in 

 such a manner, that " no one succeeded in unravelling from 

 the mass any one piece upwards of seventy or eighty feet 

 long ; as well (we are told) might we attempt to ascertain 

 the length of hemp fibre by unlaying a cable." 



The Macrocystis is no less remarkable for its eminent 



