lowers run to seed than anything else, sir!"

"Yes, that's not a bad simile of yours, my lad," he replied, moving
nearer to the side and sending his keen sailorly glance alow and aloft,
examining our old barquey to see how she fared after the storm. "If I
can remember rightly, I think one of our best naturalists has given a
similar description of it. Yes, that's the gulf-weed, or sargassum, or
_fucus natans_, as the big guns variously call it in their Latin lingo.
A rum sort of tackle, isn't it?"

"Yes, it does look funny, queer stuff, sir," said I, for I had never had
the opportunity of noticing it before, all my voyages hitherto backwards
and forwards across the Atlantic having been outside the limits of the
uncanny looking gulf-weed. "Does it grow in the sea, sir? It looks so
fresh and green."

"Well, that depends how you take it, my lad," returned the skipper
rather absently, his attention being fixed on something forward, about
which he evidently could not quite make up his mind, as there was a
slight puzzled expression on his face. "You see, it is all through
those long-winded chaps, who won't be content with what the Creator
gives them, but must put a cause and reason for everything beyond God's
own will and pleasure, and who lay down arbitrary rules of their own for
the guidance of Dame Nature, though, between you and I and the binnacle,
Haldane, the old lady got on well enough for a good many scores of
years--I'd be sorry to say how many--without their precious help! Now
these gentlemen, who know everything, will have it that the gulf-weed
grows deep down at the bottom of the sea and that only the branches and
tendrils, or leaves, so to speak, float on the top and are visible to
us."

"How strange, sir," said I. "Just like an aquarium plant. It is
strange!"

"It would be, if true, for they would have to possess uncommonly long
stems, as, in the Sagossa Sea, in the centre of the Gulf Stream, where
the weed is most plentiful and to be seen at its freshest and most
luxuriant growth, the recorded depth of the water is over four miles!"

"That is not likely, then," I observed in reply to this--"I mean, sir,
the fact of its growing up from the bottom of the sea."

"Certainly not, my boy. Another wise man, of the same kidney as the
long-winded chap of the theory I've just explained, says that the gulf-
weed in its natural and original state grows on the rocky islets and
promontories of the Florida coa