Sea Weeds. 125 



- genous. Large leaves, having no veins, and irregularly 

 /Tvided are to be referred to the fuci, or other marine plants. 

 The application of these rules for the investigation of fossil 



lants is quite easy, and by this means may be obtained some 

 general indications of the nature of the original plant. 



SEA WEEDS. 



The last and lowest of all plants are the Sea-weeds and their 

 allies. These productions, which inhabit water exclusively, 

 and appear at one end of the scale of their developement in 

 the form of enormous Fuci, many fathoms in length, but at the 

 other as merely simple bladders sticking together in rows, form 

 the link between the Animal and Vegetable worlds. Like 

 Lichens and Fungi, they have reproductive organs of the most 

 simple construction ; in those species which have the most 

 complex organization, the spores are stored up in peculiar re- 

 ceptacles, as in the larger and more perfect sea-weeds ; but in 

 others they are distributed vaguely through the whole sub- 

 stance of the plant, and start into life when liberated from their 

 nests by the destruction of the individual that generated them. 

 In the Lavers, whether of fresh or salt water, they lie clustered 

 in threes or fours, in the substance of a green membrane ; in 

 the true Confervae they are nothing but granular matter, locked 

 up in little transparent tubes. It is of a vegetation of this lat- 

 ter kind that consist the green slimy patches which are seen 

 floating in water, or adhering to stones and rocks from which 

 water has receded. 



What is most remarkable in these singular productions is 

 their approach to the nature of animals ; an approach which 

 is not only indicated by the apparently spontaneous motions of 

 some, but in a much more unequivocal manner by other kinds. 

 No one has investigated this subject with more unwearied as- 

 siduity than Mons. Gaillon, from whose "Observations surles 



