£94 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 



flourishing amidst those great breakers of the western ocean, 

 which no mass of rock, let it be ever so hard, can long resist. 

 The stem is round, slimy, and smooth, and seldom has a 

 diameter of so much as an inch. A few taken together are 

 sufficiently strong to support the weight of the large loose 

 stones to which in the inland channels they grow attached; 

 and some of these stones are so heavy, that when drawn to 

 the surface they can scarcely be lifted into a boat by one 

 person." 



" Captain Cook, in his second voyage says, that ' at Kerguelen's 

 Land some of this weed is of most enormous length, though the 

 stem is not much thicker than a man's thumb. I have men- 

 tioned that, on some of these shoals on which it grows, we did 

 not strike ground with a line of twenty-four fathoms; the 

 depth of water, therefore, must have been greater. And as this 

 weed does not grow in a perpendicular direction, but makes a 

 very acute angle with the bottom, and much of it afterwards 

 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 upwards.' 



" Certainly at the Falkland Islands, and about Tierra del 

 Fuego, extensive beds frequently spring up from ten and fifteen 

 fathoms water. I do not suppose the stem of any other plant 

 attains so great a length as 360 feet, as stated by Captain Cook. 

 Its geographical range is very considerable ; it is found from the 

 extreme southern islets near Cape Horn, as far north on the 

 eastern coast as lat. 43°, and on the western it was tolerably 

 abundant, but far from luxuriant, at Chiloe, in lat. 42°. It 

 may possibly extend a little further northward, but is soon 

 succeeded by a different species. 



" We thus have a range of 15° in latitude, and as Cook, who 

 must have been well acquainted with the species, found it at 

 Kerguelen's Land, no less than 140° in longitude. 



" The number of living creatures, of all orders, whose existence 

 intimately depends on the kelp, is wonderful. A large volume 

 might be written, describing the inhabitants of one of these beds 

 of sea-weed. Almost every leaf, except those that float on the 

 surface, is so thickly incrusted with corallines as to be of a white 

 colour. We find exquisitely delicate structures, some inhabited 

 by simple hydra-like polypi, others by more organised kinds 



