SUBMARINE FORESTS. 395 



and beautiful compound ascidise. On the flat surfaces of the 

 leaves, various patelliform shells, trochi, uncovered mollusks, and 

 some bivalves are attached. Innumerable Crustacea frequent 

 every part of the plant. On shaking the great entangled roots, 

 a pile of small fish, shells, cuttle-fish, crabs of all orders, sea- 

 eggs, star-fish, beautiful holothurise (some taking the external 

 form of the nudibranch mollusks), planarise, and crawling 

 nereidous animals of a multitude of forms, all fall out together. 

 Often as I recurred to a branch of the kelp, I never failed to dis- 

 cover animals of new and curious structure. In Chiloe, where, as i 

 have said, the kelp did not thrive very well, the numerous shells, 

 corallines, and Crustacea were absent, but there yet remained a 

 few of the Flustracese, and some compound ascidiae ; the latter, 

 however, were of different species from those in Tierra del Fuego. 

 We here see the fucus possessing a wider range than the animals 

 which use it as an abode. 



"I can only compare these great aquatic forests of the southern 

 hemisphere with the terrestrial ones in the intertropical regions. 

 Yet, if the latter should be destroyed in any country, I do not 

 believe nearly so many species of animals would perish, as under 

 similar circumstances would happen with the kelp. Amidst the 

 leaves of this plant numerous species of fish live, which nowhere 

 else would find food or shelter ; with their destruction the many 

 cormorants, divers, and other fishing-birds, the otters, seals, 

 and porpoises, would soon perish also ; and lastly the Fuegian 

 savage, the miserable lord of this miserable land, would redou- 

 ble his cannibal feast, decrease in numbers, and perhaps cease 

 to exist." 



For many a day's sail before reaching Cape Horn, large 

 bundles of the macrocystis detached by the storm announce to 

 the navigator that he is approaching the desolate coasts of 

 Tierra del Fuego* 



" We succeeded," says Professor Meyen, in his Reise um die 

 Welt, "in getting hold of one of these floating islands, which, 

 amid loud acclamations, was hauled upon deck by the exertions 

 of five men. It was quite impossible to disentangle the enor- 

 mous mass ; we could only detach, to the length of about sixty 

 feet, what we considered to be the chief stem; the branches 

 were from thirty to forty feet long, and as thick as the principal 

 trunk from which they sprang. We estimated the total length 



