Almost All The Leaves, Excepting
Those That Float On The Surface, Are So Thickly Incrusted With
Corallines As To Be Of A White Colour.
We find exquisitely
delicate structures, some inhabited by simple hydra-like
polypi, others by more organized kinds, and beautiful compound
Ascidiae.
On the leaves, also, various patelliform shells,
Trochi, uncovered molluscs, and some bivalves are attached.
Innumerable crustacea frequent every part of the plant. On
shaking the great entangled roots, a pile of small fish, shells,
cuttle-fish, crabs of all orders, sea-eggs, star-fish, beautiful
Holuthuriae, Planariae, and crawling nereidous animals of a
multitude of forms, all fall out together. Often as I recurred
to a branch of the kelp, I never failed to discover animals
of new and curious structures. In Chiloe, where the kelp
does not thrive very well, the numerous shells, corallines, and
crustacea are absent; but there yet remain a few of the
Flustraceae, and some compound Ascidiae; the latter, however,
are of different species from those in Tierra del Fuego:
we see here the fucus possessing a wider range than the animals
which use it as an abode. I can only compare these
great aquatic forests of the southern hemisphere with the
terrestrial ones in the intertropical regions. Yet if in any
country a forest was destroyed, I do not believe nearly so
many species of animals would perish as would here, from
the destruction of the kelp. Amidst the leaves of this plant
numerous species of fish live, which nowhere else could find
food or shelter; with their destruction the many cormorants
and other fishing birds, the otters, seals, and porpoises, would
soon perish also; and lastly, the Fuegian savage, the miserable
lord of this miserable land, would redouble his cannibal
feast, decrease in numbers, and perhaps cease to exist.
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