“There is one marine production, which from its importance is worthy of a particular history. It is the kelp, or Macrocystis pyrifera …. I know few things more surprising than to see this plant growing and flourishing amidst those great breakers of the western ocean, which no mass of rock, let it be ever so hard, can long resist …. The number of living creatures of all Orders, whose existence intimately depends upon the kelp, is wonderful. A great volume might be written, describing the inhabitants of one of these beds of sea-weed. Almost all the leaves, excepting those which grow upon 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 neridious animals of a multitude of forms all fall out together …. I can only compare these great aquatic forests of the southern hemisphere, with the terrestrial ones in the intertropical regions.”
On the marine iguana (Amblyrhynchus marinus)
Marine Iguanas Amblyrhynchus marinus in the Galapagos Islands
(photo: Keith Hiscock)
“It is extremely common on all the islands throughout the group, and lives exclusively on the rocky sea beaches …. It is a hideous looking creature, of a dirty black colour, stupid, and sluggish in its movements …. When in the water this lizard swims with perfect ease and quickness, by a serpentine movement of its body and flattened tail – the legs being motionless and flattened by its sides …. I opened the stomachs of several and found them largely distended with minced seaweed (Ulvae) …. I do not recollect having observed this seaweed in any quantity on the tidal rocks: and I have reason to believe it grows at the bottom of the sea, at some little distance from the coast.”
“The next day I employed myself in examining the very interesting yet simple structure and origin of these islands. The water being unusually smooth, I waded over the outer flat of dead rock as far as the living mounds of coral, on which the swell of the open sea breaks. In some of the gullies and hollows there were beautiful green and other coloured fishes, and the forms and tints of many of the zoophytes were admirable. It is excusable to grow enthusiastic over the infinite numbers of organic beings with which the sea of the tropics, so prodigal of life, teems: yet I must confess I think those naturalists who have described, in well-known words, the submarine grottoes decked with a thousand beauties, have indulged in rather exuberant language.”