When we consider that the sea-weed (_fucus_), the mud or slime (πηλὸς), the shallowness of the sea, and the perpetual calms, are always regarded by the ancients as characteristic of the Western Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules, we feel inclined, especially on account of the reference to the _calms_, to ascribe this to Punic cunning, to the tendency of a great trading people to hinder others, by terrific descriptions, from competing with them in maritime trading westwards. But even in the genuine writings of the Stagyrite,[AN] the same opinion is retained regarding the absence of wind, and Aristotle attempts to explain a false notion, or, as it seems to me, more correctly speaking, a fabulous mariner’s story, by an hypothesis regarding the depth of the sea. The stormy sea between Gades and the Islands of the Blest (Cadiz and the Canaries) can in truth in no way be compared with the sea, which lies between the tropics, ruffled only by the gentle trade-winds (_vents alisés_), and which has been very characteristically named by the Spaniards[AO] _El Golfo de las Damas_. From very careful personal researches and from comparison of the logs of many English and French vessels, I am led to believe that the old and very indefinite expression _Mar de Sargasso_, refers to two fucus banks, the larger of which is of an elongated form, and is the easternmost one, lying between the parallels of 19° and 34°, in a meridian 7° westward of the Island of Corvo, one of the Azores; while the smaller and westernmost bank is of a roundish form, and is found between Bermuda and the Bahama Islands (lat. 25°–31°, long. 66°–74°). The principal diameter of the small bank, which is traversed by ships sailing from Baxo de Plata (Caye d’Argent,) northward of St. Domingo to the Bermudas, appears to me to have a N. 60° E. direction. A transverse band of _fucus natans_, extending in an east-westerly direction between the latitudes of 25° and 30°, connects the greater with the smaller bank. I have had the pleasure of seeing these views adopted by my lamented friend Major Rennell, and confirmed, in his great work on Currents, by many new observations.[AP] The two groups of sea-weed, together with the transverse band uniting them, constitute the Sargasso Sea of the older writers, and collectively occupy an area equal to six or seven times that of Germany.