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Indeed, Pourtales had organized a party to study the temperatures as soon as we passed Gay Head, and will himself report to you his results. My own attention was entirely turned to the Gulf weed and its inhabitants, of which we made extensive collections. Our observations on the floating weed itself favor the view of those who believe it to be torn from rocks, on which Sargassum naturally grows.
Scientific questions, the variations of the magnetic pole, calculations of latitude and longitude, the newly discovered Gulf Stream and the mare sargassum, and the whereabouts of a possible strait uniting the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean, occupied his speculations.
The most interesting discovery of our voyage thus far, however, is that of a nest built by a fish, and floating on the broad ocean with its living freight. On the 13th, Mr. Mansfield, one of our officers, brought me a ball of Gulf weed which he had just picked up, and which excited my curiosity to the utmost. It was a round mass of Sargassum about the size of two fists.
Agassiz was no less interested than other naturalists have been in the old question so long asked and still unanswered, about the Sargassum. "Where is its home, and what its origin? Does it float, a rootless wanderer on the deep, or has it broken away from some submarine attachment?"
4 It belongs to the sargassum family, and is full of air sacs. Various kinds of edible seaweed form a considerable proportion of Japanese diet. 5 'This is a curiously shaped staff with which the divinity Jizo is commonly represented. It is still carried by Buddhist mendicants, and there are several sizes of it. That carried by the Yaku-otoshj is usually very short.
However, to these molluscs, the lad added some edible sea-weed, which he gathered on high rocks, whose sides were only washed by the sea at the time of high tides. This sea-weed, which belongs to the order of Fucacae, of the genus Sargassum, produces, when dry, a gelatinous matter, rich and nutritious.
Certain ancient strata, known as the Devonian black shale, occupying the Ohio valley and the neighbouring parts of North America to the east and north of that basin, appear to be accumulations which were made beneath an ancient Sargassum sea. The ocean currents have greatly favoured and in many instances determined the migrations not only of marine forms, but of land creatures as well.
He had passed through the same region before, in going to Brazil, but then he was on a large ocean steamer, while from the little Hassler, of 360 tons, one could almost fish by hand from the Sargassum fields. Some of the chief results are given in the following letter. ST. THOMAS, December 15, 1871. . . .As soon as we reached the Gulf Stream we began work.
Through the conditions which bring about the formation of Sargassum seas, those areas of the ocean where seaweeds grow afloat, as well as by the water-logging and weighting down of other vegetable matter, some part of the plant remains is carried to the sea floor, even to great depths; but the main dependence of the deep-sea forms of animals is upon other animal forms, which themselves may have obtained their store from yet others.
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