No. 505] KELPS AND RECAPITULATION THEORY 



19 



thirty feet, like an anchor rope, to the surface, where it 

 holds the large float and laminas against the impact of the 

 heavy surf. This stipe is often less than one centimeter 

 in thickness for half its length, but of such surprising 

 strength that the native fishermen tie their boats to these 

 ready-made anchors and ride out a storm, as noted by 

 MaeMillan ('99). The stipe of Egregia, however, while 

 slender and flexible, is not bare, but covered with very 

 numerous short proliferations along its whole length giv- 

 ing it the appearance of a feather boa. Some of these 

 are photosynthetic areas, some sporophylls, some floats 

 filled with air. The presence of such organs as air 

 vesicles so near the holdfast shows clearly the plant's 

 adaptation to a shallow-water habitat. It grows attached 

 to rocks which are never deeply submerged and are un- 

 covered even by a moderately low tide, where its branches, 

 buoyed up by their innumerable pneumatocysts, float with 

 their whole lengths on the surface of the water. To the 

 boatmen along that shore a thick bed of Nereocystis is a 

 sure sign of deep water, but a bunch of Egregia as surely 

 marks a rock to be avoided. 



The youngest plants of Egregia are extremely difficult 

 to separate from those of Hedophyllum. The juvenile 

 forms of both these kelps are dark brown, distinguished 

 from most others of their size by shorter stipes, together 

 with a rather strong development of hapteres. The 

 youngest plant of Egregia found (Fig. 28) was 25 mm. 

 long, with a lamina about 20 mm. long and 10 mm. wide. 

 The holdfast had already developed a circle of secondary 

 hapteres, although the primitive holdfast could be made 

 out beneath the secondary. The stipe was but 3 mm. 

 long, cylindrical, and featureless except for a very slight 

 thickening about a millimeter below the base of the blade. 

 This appeared to be the beginning of the proliferations 

 which characterize the later stages of the plant. 



The thickening of the stipe soon becomes more pro- 

 nounced and develops into a pair of horns about a milli- 

 meter long just below the base of the lamina and lying 

 in the same plane (Fig. 29). These are the only dis- 



