Note (return) — INHABITANTS OF MY POOL

Let us begin with seaweeds. I have said that there are three leading colors in my pool—green, olive, and red—and these tints mark roughly three kinds of weed, though they occur in an endless variety of shapes. Here is a piece of the beautiful pale green seaweed, called the Laver or Sea-Lettuce, Ulva Linza (1, Fig. 1),4 which grows in long ribbons in a sunny nook in the water. I have placed under the first microscope a piece of this weed which is just sending out young seaweeds in the shape of tiny cells, with lashes very like those we saw coming from the moss-flower, and I have pressed them in the position in which they would naturally leave the plant. You will also see on this side several cells in which these tiny spores are forming, ready to burst out and swim; for this green weed is merely a collection of cells, like the single-celled plants on land. Each cell can work as a separate plant; it feeds, grows, and can send out its own young spores.