Dr. Hookers Flora Antarctica. ' 175 



of the sea, in latitudes where no boat can be lowered. Again, 

 D'Urville, upon whose observations in natural history the utmost 

 reliance may be placed, states it to grow in eight, ten, and even 

 fifteen brasses of water, from which depth it ascends obliquely 

 and floats along the surface nearly as far ; this gives a length of 

 200 feet. In the Falkland Islands, Cape Horn, and Kerguelen's 

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

 boat can hardly be forced through it, it generally rises from eight 

 to twelve fathoms water, and the fronds extend upwards of one 

 hundred feet upon the surface. We seldom, however, had op- 

 portumties of measuring the largest specimens, though washed 

 up entire on the shore ; for on the outer coasts of the Falkland 

 Islands, where the beach is lined for miles with entangled cables 

 of Macrosystis, much thicker than the human body, and twined 

 of innumerable strands of stems coiled together by the rolling 

 action of the surf, no one succeeded in unravelling from the mass 

 any one piece upwards of seventy or eighty feet long ; as well 

 might we attempt to ascertain the length of hemp fibre by un- 

 laying a cable. In Kerguelen's Land, the length of some pieces, 

 which grew in the middle of Christmas Harbor, was estimated 

 at more than three hundred feet ; but by far the largest seen du- 

 ring the Antarctic Expedition, were amongst the first of any ex- 

 traordinary length which the ships encountered, and they were 

 not particularly noticed, from the belief that the report of up- 

 wards of 1000 feet length was true; or, at any rate, that better 

 opportunities of testing its truth would arise in the course of a 

 three years' voyage, than the first week of our explorations could 

 afford. These occurred in a strait between two of the Crozet 

 Islands, where, very far from either shore, in what is believed to 

 be forty fathoms water, somewhat isolated stems of Macrosystis 

 rose at an angle of 45° from the bottom, and streamed along the 

 surface for a distance certainly equal to several times the length 

 "f the "Erebus;"— data, which, if correct, (and we believe 

 them so) give the total length of the stems as about 700 feet. 



" That isolated patches of weed should rise through such a vol- 

 ume of water is not incompatible with the statements we have 

 elsewhere made, that eight or ten fathoms is the utmost depth at 

 which, judging by our experience, submerged sea-weed vegetates 

 >n the Southern temperate and Antarctic Ocean. These excep- 

 tional cases are probably due to the present plant having attained 

 s uch a size in its birth-place near shore, as to weigh its strong 

 moorings and deposit itself in deeper water, where an increase of 

 the roots would unite the 



ong 



and 



gain a footing that defies the power of the elements. 



" VVe have stated that the elongation of the Macrosystis may 

 be indefinite ; but this is only true partially and in the case of de- 

 tached patches ; for the stem of the attached plant does not gain 



