nether darkness, it looks as if it could resist the hand; as if one
might almost walk on it; so unlike any liquid, as seen near shore or
inland, is this leaping, heaving plain, reminding one, by its
innumerable conchoidal curves, not of water, not even of ice, but
rather of obsidian.

After all we got little of the sargasso. Only in a sailing ship,
and in calms or light breezes, can its treasures be explored.
Twelve knots an hour is a pace sufficient to tear off the weed, as
it is hauled alongside, all living things which are not rooted to
it. We got, therefore, no Crustacea; neither did we get a single
specimen of the Calamaries, {8} which may be described as cuttlefish
carrying hooks on their arms as well as suckers, the lingering
descendants of a most ancient form, which existed at least as far
back as the era of the shallow oolitic seas, x or y thousand years
ago. A tiny curled Spirorbis, a Lepraria, with its thousandfold
cells, and a tiny polype belonging to the Campanularias, with a
creeping stem, which sends up here and there a yellow-stalked bell,
were all the parasites we saw. But the sargasso itself is a curious
instance of the fashion in which one form so often mimics another of
a quite different family. When fresh out of the water it resembles
not a sea-weed so much as a sprig of some willow-leaved shrub,
burdened with yellow berries, large and small; for every broken bit
of it seems growing, and throwing out ever new berries and leaves--
or what, for want of a better word, must be called leaves in a sea-
weed. For it must be remembered that the frond of a sea-weed is not
merely leaf, but root also; that it not only breathes air, but feeds
on water; and that even the so-called root by which a sea-weed holds
to the rock is really only an anchor, holding mechanically to the
stone, but not deriving, as the root of a land-plant would, any
nourishment from it. Therefore it is, that to grow while uprooted
and floating, though impossible to most land plants, is easy enough
to many sea-weeds, and especially to the sargasso.

The flying-fish now began to be a source of continual amusement as
they scuttled away from under the bows of the ship, mistaking her,
probably, for some huge devouring whale. So strange are they when
first seen, though long read of and long looked for, that it is
difficult to recollect that they are actually fish. The first
little one was mistaken for