SEA-WEEDS. 
177 
Hooker has identified one-fifth with the 
British Algae. 
^'The high latitudes of the Antarctic Ocean 
are not so destitute of vegetation as was 
at first believed. Most minute objects, al¬ 
together invisible to the naked eye, except 
in mass, and which were taken for siliceous 
shelled animalcules of the infusoria kind, 
prove to be vegetable. They are a species 
of the Diatomacem, which, from their mul¬ 
titudes, give the sea a pale ochreous brown 
colour. They increase in numbers with the 
latitude, up to the highest point yet attained 
by man, and no doubt afford the supply of 
food to many of the minute animals in the 
antarctic seas. Genera and species of this 
plant exist in every sea from Victoria Land 
to Spitzbergen. It is one of the remarkable 
instances of a great end being effected by 
small means ; for the death of this antartic 
vegetation is forming a submarine bank be¬ 
tween the 76th and 78th parallels of south 
latitude, and from the 165th to the 160th 
western meridian. 
Great patches of Confervee are occa¬ 
sionally met with in the high seas. Bands 
