MARINE PLANTS. 17 



in small specimens it is easily seen that they 

 have grown in all directions from a central 

 point, which never has been fixed. 



A sea-weed, common in the North Sea, 

 (Chorda filum,) is frequently found of the 

 length of thirty or forty feet. In Scalpa Bay, 

 in Orkney, this plant forms meadows, through 

 which a pinnace can with difficulty force its 

 way. On the western coasts of the British 

 Channel, there are permanent bands or masses 

 of this sea-weed, lying in the direction of the 

 currents, not more than six hundred feet wide, 

 but fifteen or twenty miles in length. Another 

 species (Lessonia fuscescens) is, we are in- 

 formed, twenty-five or thirty feet long, with a 

 trunk as thick as a man's thigh, and with numer- 

 ous branches, from which long leaves droop into 

 the water like willows. There are immense 

 submarine forests off Patagonia and Terra del 

 Fuego, attached to the rocks at the bottom. 

 These plants are so strong and buoyant that 

 they bring up large masses of stone ; and as 

 they grow slanting, and stretch along the 

 surface of the sea, they are sometimes three 

 hundred feet long. The quantity of living 

 creatures which inhabit these submarine forests, 

 and the parasitical weeds attached to them, is 

 inconceivable they absolutely teem with life. 

 But for gigantic size, the prodigious ponds of a 

 species (Macrocystis pyriferd) found about Cape 

 Horn, and in the Straits of Magellan and Le 

 Maine, exceed all others. Specimens have 

 been measured which exceed three hundred 



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