1834.] GREAT SEA-WEED. 239 
individual animals than any other station. ‘There is one marine 
production, which from its importance is worthy of a particular 
history. It is the kelp, or Macrocystis pyrifera. This plant 
grows on every rock from low-water mark to a great depth, 
both on the outer coast and within the channels.* I believe, 
during the voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, not one rock 
near the surface was discovered which was not buoyed by this 
floating weed. The good service it thus affords to vessels navi- 
gating near this stormy land is evident; and it certainly has 
saved many a one from being wrecked. I know few things more 
surprising than to see this plant growing and 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 chan- 
nels they grow attached; and yet some of these stones were so 
heavy that when drawn to the surface, they could scarcely be 
lifted into a boat by one person. Captain Cook, in his second 
voyage, says, that this plant at Kerguelen Land rises from a 
greater depth than twenty-four fathoms; “ and as it 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 tothe length of sixty fathoms and upwards.” I do 
not suppose the stem of any other plant attains so great a length 
as three hundred and sixty feet, as stated by Captain Cook. 
Captain Fitz Roy, moreover, found it growing { up from the 
* Its geographical range is remarkably wide; it is found from the 
extreme southern islets near Cape Horn, as far north on the eastern coast 
(according to information given me by Mr. Stokes) as lat. 43°,—but 
on the western coast, as Dr. Hooker tells me, it extends to the R. San 
Francisco in California, and perhaps even to Kamtschatka. We thus have 
an immense range in latitude; and as Cook, who must have been well 
acquainted with the species, found it at Kerguelen Land, no less than 140° 
in longitude. 
+ Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, vol. i. p. 365.—It appears that sea- 
weed grows extremely quick. Mr. Stephenson found (Wilson’s Voyage 
round Scotland, vol. ii. p. 228) that a rock uncovered only at spring-tides, 
which had been chiselled smooth in November, on the following May, that 
is within six months afterwards, was thickly covered with Fucus digitatus 
two feet, aiid I’. csculentus six feet, in length. 
