seas. Nor are they confined within these one place, they may be seen collected and boundaries, for physiologists recognize still in movement at that place. There is them as parasites growing on insects, another class which every one knows, called worms, fishes, in the internal tissues of the protococcus, which grows on damp ruminants, and even in the eyes of man, stones, forming beds, sometimes red, but his tongue, and his throat. They present generally of a yellow green. It is the the greatest variety of form. Some are simplest of all vegetable creations, and simple elongated filaments, others have an consists of a hollow transparent cell filled appearance of membranes striking out with colouring matter. At a certain seafrom a long stem: sometimes we say they son of the year, it will be seen that each are like parchment or india-rubber; now cell contains a number of others, which inas transparent balloons, or gophered stuff, crease, press each other, and finally burst trembling jelly, or horn shavings, bands their shell, and thus form new plants, mulof tanned skin, or fans of green paper. tiplying to an immense extent. To the The most curious forms are to be found in same family belongs the nostoc, which, in this fantastic world. Nor are the colours early days, was regarded as a marvellous less various black, olive, yellow, green, production, and called by many fanciful carmine; the brown being the commonest, names, such as flower of heaven, heavenly the red lying beneath the water, the green heat, moon-spittle, &c. It is found on at the surface. They have no fibres, ves- damp autumn days in garden alleys, or on sels, or circulation-nothing but the first the top of walls covered with earth, where vegetable element, the cell; and what it forms little gelatinous masses, dissipated might be called the root is not of use to by the sun's rays, but appearing again nourish the plant, but simply to maintain during the night. Innumerable chaplets it in its place. Yet there are some indica- of green granules appear in the midst of tions of an approach to animal life, as in the jelly, and are perfectly inert, except the corallines, which have the singular at certain seasons when the sun acts upon power of encrusting themselves with car- them. The chaplets cover themselves bonate of chalk, like the shell-fish, and with a thin membrane, and are enlarged also in their rapid decomposition, when by the collecting of the green globules the disagreeable odour recalls that of ani- into a sort of transparent bag, where, for mal matter in a state of putrefaction. a few days, they present a confused appearance, after which a fresh chaplet bursts out at the side, and begins a new and independent life. Sometimes each end of the chaplet elongates, enlarges, taking an elliptical form, deep in colour, and becoming a kind of membranous pouch. At this period, it is not unlike a caterpillar, each end terminating with a black head, which contains the spore. This pierces its envelope, and a new plant is formed, and recommences the same curious phenomena. They are propagated by what is called a spore, which has some relation to a seed, but is distinguished from it by the power it has of giving birth to individuals altogether different from the parent. Indeed, in all cryptogamous plants, the young one presents the characteristics of an inferior class. Every moss that germinates resembles a confervæ or river-sponge; every fern, a hepatica, or liver-wort; but what merits more particular attention is the faculty of moving which characterizes the spores the reason is at present wholly Curiosities are so abundant in this unknown, some naturalists recognizing world of sea-weeds, that after having commanifestations of life in them, which, car-pared the different classes with the utried away by youthful energy, long to pass most patience, and by the aid of a powthe boundary in the vegetable kingdom, erful microscope, it is almost impossible then hesitate, draw back, and end by tak- to say where the different sections begin ing their natural place in the scale of beings. There is one class of sea-weeds to which the name of oscillary has been given they are always in a state of agitation so long as they exist. Sometimes isolated, sometimes connected, these little plants, consisting of a simple tube, have their free extremity perpetually moving, vertically or spirally; but it is evident that the light has a great effect upon them. When enclosed in a glass from which the light is effectually excluded, excepting in and end. One named from the Greek word arthron, articulation, comprehends a number of filainentous beings full of coloured specks. All have the power of moving; they swim, climb: many seem to be really animals, others pass alternately from apparent life to a purely vegetable state. Sometimes their filaments meet, fasten end to end, and form a canal, through which the granules of one pass to the other, giving birth to a spore, which f in its turn traverses the phases of this al largeness of the seas which they inhabit: thus, in the Mediterranean, the smaller kinds are found; in the Atlantic Ocean, larger; in the Arctic Ocean the long-leaved laminaries; and in the Antarctic, the vastest body of water in the world, are seaweeds which have been compared to marine trees, such as the gigantic Durvillea. ternate life. If we rise in the series to the the intimate relation which exists bemost common and abundant of sea-weeds, tween the dimension of the sea-weed and the the fucus, we find its fronds flat, forked, and swelled here and there by oval vesicles filled with air, to support it on the surface of the water. Besides these, tuberculous excrescences terminate the forks; which, when examined, are like carefully lined nests- -one containing bags of corpuscles; the other, spores of much larger dimensions. If these are detached, and Among the most remarkable homes of laid together in sea-water, an amusing the marine flora, sailors have noticed some, scene commences: during a few moments, the importance of which is out of all prothe antherozoids, as the former are called, portion with what is seen in other seas. move about in extreme confusion, swim- These banks of fucæ spread over the surming without aim, and intermixing the face of the water like meadows, on the filaments which are at each end of their green-sward of which the foot might seem orange-spotted body. Then, meeting a safely to tread, so thick and solidly bound spore, they seize upon it, cover it with together are they. Every sailor knows numbers, and by means of their vibratory the one which is situated between the hairy tuft, communicate to it a rotary Azores, the Canary Islands, and the Cape motion, the rapidity of which is most de Verd. Had Columbus listened to the astonishing, when the enormous dispropor- murmurs of his crews, when sailing in this tion of size between the two is taken into strange sea, which hindered his advance, consideration. The spores must waltz he would have turned back to Spain, and on, and their large yellow balls are bris- the New World would not then have been tling with the strange little corpuscles, discovered, so alarmned were they at so which, almost lost on their surface, can strange a phenomenon. Another mass only be seen by the agitation of their trem- nearly as considerable that is, about six bling and silky filaments. times the size of France - extends itself in the Pacific Ocean not far from the Californian coast. The sea-weeds come from all parts; torn from the shores of many lands, and carried by marine currents or the action of the waves, they form enormous vegetable banks, which float on the surface of the waters, carrying from one hemisphere to the other myriads of every kind of insects; and when settled down in calm waters, become centres of life and reproduction unsurpassed by the immense forests of the tropics. Nor is it only on the surface of the waters that sea-weeds are found in every latitude; the submarine flora has many representatives of this rich family, which, from the little ectocarpus, which carpets the ground, to the gigantic fucus, many hundreds of yardз in length, live in marshes, lakes, rivers, and oceans. There is scarcely any shore where these are not to be found; but it is more particularly on the coasts of the Pacific Ocean that the diver can contemplate this undergrowth in all its magnificence equalling in richness the landscapes of the tropical zones. Their forms, colours, and undulations are without parallel. Myriads of the little confervæ are pressed together in immense prairies, like a velvet-pile carpet; shaded with every imaginable green, set off here and there by the ample leaves of the sea-lettuce, or dyed with the scarlet The difficulty of classifying these elementary families has already been mentioned, but naturalists have divided them into two classes, according to the place where they vegetate: that is to say, sweet-water seaweeds, such as the ulvæ and confervæ; and marine sea-weeds-as, for instance, the fucus. Another commoner arrangement divides them into five tribes, according to their form and appearance. The nature of the soil which they require is a matter of indifference to them; their only element is water; the place to which they attach themselves is simply used as a support, and from the marsh where they stagnate, to the oceans where their gigantic fronds cover the surface, they form the most independent of the vegetable kingdoms; swimming, floating, or carrying away with them their elements of life and reproduction, when torn from the place of their birth. This ceases to be the case when the degree of depth which each species requires is considered. Each seems to belong to a certain zone, beyond which it cannot vegetate. This will easily be understood when we think of the different currents, the degrees of depth and density, the relative quantities of light and heat, perhaps also the saltness of the water, but above all, the climate which the different oceans occupy. A curious fact is found in light thrown by the floating iridiæ. Then From The Spectator. AN OPEN POLAR OCEAN. DR. PETERMANN, the eminent German geographer, has just announced a very interesting discovery. It will be in the knowledge of most of our readers that during the last two or three years, German, Swedish, and American explorers have been engaged in a series of attempts to reach the North Pole of the earth; or rather, it were perhaps more just to say that they have sought a less barren success, and that the ostensible purpose, of their journeys has been to determine the It is not difficult to imagine the effect true nature of those almost unknown rewhich the least agitation of the waves gions which lie north of the 80th parallel must produce on these long and supple of latitude. Apart altogether from the plants, but almost impossible to describe interest attaching to the question whether the fugitive tints which adorn this moving the Pole of the earth can be reached, there picture, when the rays of the sun, break- is much to encourage Arctic research. The ing through the waves, vivify the different flora and fauna of Arctic regions are well colours which mingle and harmonize in worthy of study; and even more interestthe deep waters. Then all the living crea- ing are the glacial phenomena presented tures must be depicted which animate amid that dismal domain. The student of these submarine landscapes: a thousand the earth's magnetism cannot but look crabs travelling amidst the green ulva; with interest to those regions towards shoals of sea-dogs, or columns of silver which the magnetic needle seems to direct herring, gliding through the madrepores; him. Within the Arctic regions also lie the brilliant sea-anemone flourishing on the poles of cold; there the winds comthe reefs; or the blue bell of some medusa plete their circuit; and there, if a modern drawing its tentacles among the long rib-theory be correct, lies the mainspring of bons of the laminariæ. the whole system of oceanic circulation. In the economy of nature, sea-weeds But lastly, material interests are involved play no unimportant part. If we look back to that distant period of the world's history when the scarcely cold crust of the earth was covered by water, we find the remains of the primordial protococcus in the lukewarm waters, the simple globules of which were preparing to cover the whole of the world. As the higher summits emerged into the light of day, they were covered with the first layer of earth, or mud, arising from decomposed seaweeds. To the present time, they continue to lay the foundation, at the bottom of oceans, lakes, and rivers, of that fruitful detritus which successive generations of vegetable matter utilize so successfully. Independently of this, they have also an immediate and practical use; no poisonous sea-weeds are known; there are many kinds which furnish abundant alimentary resources, and others which are used on a vast scale in manufactures. THE Island of Gorgona, off the coast of Choco, is much complained of by ship captains for its electric storms, and its irregular currents. It has held this reputation since the time of Pi zarro. in Arctic voyaging, since the whale fishery forms no unimportant branch of industry, and its success depends in large measure on the discovery of all the regions where the whales do chiefly congregate. The discovery just announced by Dr. Petermann bears as closely on this question of the whale fishery as upon those problems respecting the Polar regions. which had perplexed men of science. Among the expeditions which had sailed during the spring of the present year, there was one, under the command of the German Lieutenants Payer and Weyprecht, which had sought the almost unvisited seas lying between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla. In a Norwegian sloop they penetrated into these seas; and now we have news of their complete success in attaining a very high northerly latitude,the highest, we believe, ever attained in that direction. In latitude 78° north they found open water, extending in longitude from 42° to 60° (east), and abounding in whales; and they believe that under favourable conditions this sea would afford an open way to the pole. It is to be remarked in passing that one of our scientific contemporaries has been is somewhat hasty, as we judge, in regarding | phus; as fast as they journeyed norththis result interesting as it undoubtedly ward the winds carried southward the as "the discovery of the open Arctic whole of the ice-field on which they were sea which has been so long searched for." voyaging. The ice-field was not fixed, as The question whether there is an open sea they had supposed, but, vast as was its exextending to the pole of the earth itself is tent and thickness, it was floating on the as far from solution as it ever was. It has Arctic seas. No surer evidence could long since been known that open water have been given of the existence of open lies beyond the ice-bound seas which sur- Arctic water farther north. When Parry round the northern shores of Siberia. It led his men homewards there must have. is to this open water, not actually seen, been open water all along the northern but as actually discovered as though it had edge of the great ice-field, and extending been seen, by Wrangel and his fellow- to a distance of at least two hundred miles voyagers, that the name Polynia was first towards the pole. Such an extent of assigned. It has also been shown that water, at the very least, must have been there is open water to the north of por- left open by the mere southerly drift of tions of the American continent; while the great ice-field. within the angle between north Green- But the discovery just announced, land, and the prolongation of the western although it affords no new evidence of shore of Kennedy's Channel, open water importance respecting the open Polar sea, rolling with the swell of a boundless is yet of great interest, in showing how ocean," has been seen to extend "as far as the eye could reach" towards the north. It is also well known that close by the very region where Payer and Weyprecht found open water, our countryman Henry Hudson, sailing in one of the clumsy tubs called ships in the days of Queen Elizabeth, reached a far higher northerly latitude than the German voyagers. He did not, however, pursue the same course, since whereas they have penetrated between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, he sailed round the north-western shores of the former island. Sir Ed. Parry, in 1827, reached yet farther north, and although his Voyage on a due northerly course from Spitzbergen was not a sea journey, but prosecuted by means of boats and sledges over the ice-covered seas, yet the manner in which his progress towards the pole was finally stopped shows clearly that the seas on which the ice-fields lay were both wide and deep. His party were already well advanced on their course over what they supposed to be a solid ice-field, extending perhaps to within but a short distance of the pole; or even beyond it. They were harassed by the difficulties and dangers which they had to encounter, and several of their number were rendered half blind by the glare of the snow-fields; but they still plodded steadily onwards, upheld by the hope of achieving that enterprise which so many had attempted in vain. At length, constant winds from the north began to try their spirit. It seemed as though the guardian genius of the Arctic regions had commissioned these winds to oppose the efforts of the intruders. The men pushed on, despite the winds, but their efforts were as the labours of Sisy the open water surrounding northern Spitz- 1 hitherto unvisited northern shores of the termed "the Queen's Household." Not a island (we suppose) of Greenland. It is little of philological interest attaches also 20 even possible that a voyage along the still, in some cases, to its nomenclature,— course now discovered may supply the as, for instance, in the use of the word best means of ascertaining the configura-yeoman," to designate an officer between tion of the northern shores of that strange the "serjeant "" and the "assistant" archipelago lying to the north of the (formerly " groom"), in which case it American continent. Indeed it is difficult seems clearly, as in many guild-charters to say how otherwise those shores can and statutes, to mean simply "young man." ever be reached. All the attempts hither- Still more precious to the philologist is to made by the seekers after a North- the term "ewry," as surviving only here, Western passage have failed in enabling and as representing, with its still current the voyagers to find a course outside the brother-word "ewer," an extinct Norinan North-American Arctic archipelago; and, family of words which have no remaining as our readers are doubtless aware, the near kinship in French beyond the familier problem of the North-Western Passage was eau ("ewe" in our early statutes), the only at length solved, not by sailing round this modern French word for water-vessel bearchipelago, but by penetrating through ing a South-French form, much more it to a spot subsequently reached by nearly related to aqua,- aiguière. Voyagers who had passed through Behring's Straits. It would be strange, indeed, but not altogether unexpected, if voyagers from the seas lying to the north of Spitzbergen should be able to reach Behring's Straits by an open-sea course. We say "not wholly unexpected" because the late Captain Lambert proposed to reach the North Pole- or to attempt to reach it from the side of Behring's Straits; and since others have believed that the pole could be reached from the direction of Spitzbergen, we might infer, by combining the two theories, that an open-sea communication exists between Spitzbergen and Behring's Straits. Should this prove to be the case, the discovery would certainly not be the least interest ing result of the successful voyage of Lieutenants Payer and Weypecht. Of course, the voyage between Spitzenbergen and Behring's Straits would be far too dangerous for any save exploring expeditions; but it is a fact worthy of mention, that should such a voyage be possible, the journey from England to the Chinese seas by Spitzbergen and Behring's Straits would be far shorter, so far as mere distance is concerned, not only than the course thither round the Cape of Good Hope, but even than the famous North-Westerly passage, the search for which has cost so many valuable lives. 2 From The Spectator. THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD, -1788 AND 1871. THERE is probably no element in the national life of England involving so much of middle-age and even Byzantine arehæology as the constitution of what is We do not go so far as to say that archæology and philology demand that the Queen's Household should be kept upon its present footing. We could see without a pang the disappearance of the" Hereditary Grand Falconer," whatever savour of the ages of romance may cling to the title, and although, sooth to say, Hurlingham pigeon-shooting may appear to us an utterly base and snobbish substitute for the falconer's craft, and, pace Sir Charles Dilke, much less worth the continuance of the Duke of St. Alban's £1,500 a year than his present sinecure. We are strongly inclined to believe that - assuming the pageantry of a Court to be still kept up a judicious weeding out of superfluous offices from the Household would be practicable, and would probably bring relief in many ways to the Sovereign herself. But there is one element of singular unfairness in Sir Charles Dilke's mode of dealing with the subject. To judge from his speech, one would think that the Household had been hitherto treated as a sacrosanct ark, on which no hand had ever been laid. It is easy to show that this is by no means the case, and that the Sovereign's Household in 1871, however superfluously ample it may yet appear to many, is yet of far scantier dimensions than it was, say, a century and a half ago. Take, for instance, the eighth edition, printed 1738, of that curious book, the Gazetteer and Imperial Calendar, in one of our forefathers', (Chamberlayne's) "Present State of Great Britain and Ireland." We find here the three great divisions or departments of the Household, the same as now,those of the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, and the Master of the Horse. But if we compare their composition with that |