Charles Crump

“ In other plants, as in the common oarweed, the root is composed of a number of stout cords growing out of the frond, which twist round projections of the rock and insert themselves into its holes and crevices, grasping it so firmly as to defy the efforts of the waves to tear the plant from its station. In a few instances the distinction between root, stem and leaf, vanishes altogether, and the plant becomes a mere crust growing over the surface of the rock, or a shapeless mass, either hollow or filled with loose branching fibres. ”

“ Difficult indeed it is to believe that the lovely little tree-like structure waving its branches so gracefully in the rock-pool just filled by the advancing tide, is the same with the mass of inextricable confusion making the rocks hideous, from which a moment ago we turned our eyes with a feeling near akin to disgust. ”

“ And not over form only does water exercise an influence so powerful, calling order out of chaos, symmetry out of deformity. Over colour, too, its spell is equally potent, giving to the forms which it has created a new and brilliant lustre and collours not their own. ”

“ These spores have by themselves no more power of growing into a new plant than the antherozoids; like them, left to themselves, they soon decay. It is only by the union of the two that a new plant can be produced. In the species which we have been describing, this union takes place within the frond, and it is therefore very difficult to get a peep at the process. But in the equally common Bladder-wrack, the antherozoids and spores are always found on distinct plants, and the fructification of the spores takes place after they have been discharged from the frond. ”

“ In many of them we find instances of that strange process of reproduction by means of zoospores, or moving spores, which so often occurs among their green-spored relations. The zoospores may be well seen in the plants which belong to the genus Ectocarpus, one or two species of which are very common in the summer, spreading in a matted mass over rocks and larger seaweeds, and looking when left by the tide like a layer of withered and rotting leaves. The moving spores are formed in the last cell of each of the fine threads of which the plant is composed. ”

“ To the eye at a little distance it seems substantial enough to walk upon. Patches of the weed are generally to be seen floating along the outer edge of the Gulf stream. The seaweed always tails to a steady or constant wind, and thus serves the mariner as a sort of marine anemometer, telling him whether the wind as he finds it has been blowing for some time, or whether it has just shifted, and which way. ”

“ Of these latter the most remarkable instance is to be found in the Straits of Magellan, where the seaweed is often so thickly crowded as sensibly to impede the motion of the paddles of large steamers.
Of the three great classes into which the seaweeds are divided, the brown seaweeds are, with a few exceptions, the most highly organised. In them Nature gives the first hint of the division of the plant into root, stem, and leaf, of which she elsewhere makes so frequent use. ”

“ The plants of which these vast floating meadows are composed belong for the most part to the species Sargassum bacciferum—the Berry-bearing Gulf-weed—which, unlike most other seaweeds, floats freely in the water, and is seldom or never found growing upon stones or rocks. ”

“ The head-quarters of the Olive seaweeds are the Equatorial seas. There they flourish with a luxuriance unknown in colder climes, and attain a size which dwarfs by comparison our largest English forms. ”

“ The Gulf-weed is sometimes found upon our own shores, being conveyed there by the agency of the same currents by which West Indian fruits and seeds are occasionally thrown upon the western coasts of Ireland and Scotland. ”

“ Plants containing spores may be recognised by the olive colour of the thickened extremity of the frond, those containing spores by the same portion being orange or yellow. By mixing in a drop of sea-water a small portion of the contents of the olive and yellow receptacles, the whole process may, with the aid of a good microscope, be easily seen. ”

“ Doubtless, however, the chief purpose which they serve is that of removing from the sea the excess of soluble salts washed into it by the rivers, and if we call to mind that an increase in the saltness of the sea would, by diminishing the amount of evaporation from its surface, cause a corresponding diminution in the total amount of rain which falls upon the surface of the earth, we shall see that it is scarcely possible to overrate the importance of the work performed by these apparently insignificant plants. ”