MARINE BOTANY. 11 



This curious fact is probably owing to the absence of fit 

 stations for the reef-building polypifers; other organic 

 beings in those regions obtaining, in the great struggle for 

 existence, a mastery over them.* 



7th. The Antarctic American, comprehending from Chili 

 to Cape Horn, the Falkland Islands, and thence round the 

 world south of lat. 50 S. 



8th. The Australian and New Zealand, of which the 

 marine productions are equally peculiar with such as vary 

 the hills and plains of those recently- discovered countries. 



9th. The Indian Ocean and Red Sea, with their infinite 

 variety of coral reefs and islands. 



10th. The Chinese and Japanese seas, in addition to 

 which, there are yet a few not well defined, and which 

 especially pertain to the Pacific Ocean. 



Such are the ten divisions into which botanists have 

 divided the world of waters, each with its peculiar growth 

 of Algte ; but while regarding this interesting portion of 

 our subject, it must ever be borne in mind that in subaqueous, 

 equally with terrestrial plants, the distinctiveness between 

 the provinces relates strictly to species, and not to forms. 

 Nor less worthy of observation is the recently-established 

 fact, that, with regard to the numerical preponderance of 

 certain forms and peculiarities of internal structure, a 

 marked agreement is generally perceptible in the vegetable 

 productions of aqueous provinces, placed in corresponding 

 latitudes and under similar physical circumstances, however 

 remote their position. Sea-weeds on the shores of the 

 Brazils, Equinoctial Africa, and India, present innumerable 

 points of analogy. Few species, however, of subaqueous 

 plants are common to the seas of Van Diemen's Land, New 

 Zealand, and Fuegia, but a great number of genera, and 

 among these, some few confined to the above-mentioned 

 regions of the southern hemisphere, are severally repre- 



f Principles of Geology, by Charles Leyell, 



