“As the majority of these plants consist of very simple vegetable cells, enclosed in indestructible silex (as other Algae are in carbonate of lime), it is obvious that the death and decomposition of such multitudes must form sedimentary deposits, proportionate in their extent to the length and exposure of the coast against which they are washed, in thickness to the power of such agents as the winds, currents, and sea, which sweep them more energetically to certain positions, and in purity, to the depth of the water and nature of the bottom.  Hence we detected their remains along every icebound shore, in the depths of the adjacent ocean, between 80 and 400 fathoms.  Off Victoria Barrier (a perpendicular wall of ice between one and two hundred feet above the level of the sea) the bottom of the ocean was covered with a stratum of pure white or green mud, composed principally of the silicious shells of the Diatomaceoe.  These, on being put into water, rendered it cloudy like milk, and took many hours to subside.  In the very deep water off Victoria and Graham’s Land, this mud was particularly pure and fine; but towards the shallow shores there existed a greater or less admixture of disintegrated rock and sand; so that the organic compounds of the bottom frequently bore but a small proportion to the inorganic.” ...

“The universal existence of such an invisible vegetation as that of the Antarctic Ocean, is a truly wonderful fact, and the more from its not being accompanied by plants of a high order.  During the years we spent there, I had been accustomed to regard the phenomena of life as differing totally from what obtains throughout all other latitudes, for everything living appeared to be of animal origin.  The ocean swarmed with Mollusca, and particularly entomostracous Crustacea, small whales, and porpoises; the sea abounded with penguins and seals, and the air with birds; the animal kingdom was ever present, the larger creatures preying on the smaller, and these again on smaller still; all seemed carnivorous.  The herbivorous were not recognised, because feeding on a microscopic herbage, of whose true nature I had formed an erroneous impression.  It is, therefore, with no little satisfaction that I now class the Diatomaceoe with plants, probably maintaining in the South Polar Ocean that balance between the vegetable and the animal kingdoms which prevails over the surface of our globe.  Nor is the sustenance and nutrition of the animal kingdom the only function these minute productions may perform; they may also be the purifiers of the vitiated atmosphere, and thus execute in the Antarctic latitudes the office of our trees and grass turf in the temperate regions, and the broad leaves of the palm, &c., in the tropics.” ...

With respect to the distribution of the Diatomaceoe, Dr. Hooker remarks:—­