“
. These plants, generally composed, like the , of soft cellular tissue, have rarely been preserved in a fossil state. Even at the present time, and though the shallow shores of the sea are inhabited by a luxuriant vegetation of ', and covered by heaps of their remains thrown out by the waves; though on some parts of the ocean, and far from any land, the surface of the sea is covered by a vegetation those marine plants ('), whose branches and filaments are so thickly interwoven, that they sometimes became impassible to ships; though also in the cold regions of both Arctic and Antarctic oceans, species of are found of immense stature, either of a prodigious length, or of a thickness equaling that of the trunks of large trees,—remains of marine plants are scarcely, if ever, found imbedded, in a state of preservation, either in sand, in clay, or in any other compound, where s remain unimpaired and preserved with their normal shape
— LEO LESQUEREUX