ON THE[77
ORIGIN AND MODE OF PROPAGATION
OF THE GULF-WEED.
Read before the Linnean Society, May 7, 1850.
Read a letter, dated May 19th, 1845, addressed by the President to Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, for communication to Baron Alexander von Humboldt, "On the Origin and Mode of Propagation of the Gulf-weed." The letter is as
follows:—
"My dear Captain Beaufort,—I am vexed to have kept Baron Humboldt's letter so long, and now in returning it, that it should be accompanied by so little satisfactory information on the only one of its queries with which I could have been supposed to deal, namely, that which relates to the origin and mode of propagation of the Gulf-weed.
"On this subject it appears that M. de Humboldt (in his Personal Narrative) first supported the more ancient notion, that the plant, originally fixed, was brought with the stream from the Gulf of Florida, and deposited in what Major Rennell calls the recipient of that stream. More recently, however, Baron Humboldt has adopted the opinion,[1] also held by several travellers, that the Gulf-weed originates and propagates itself where it is now found. To the adoption of this view it appears that he has been led chiefly by the
- ↑ Histoire de la Géographie du Nouveau Continent, vol. iii, p. 73, and Meyen, Reise, vol. i, p. 36–9.
