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Show ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 353 Sir James Ross from the frozen antarctic regions, is now exploring the Thibetian portion of the Himalaya, the geography of plants is indebted not only for a great mass of important materials, but also for excellent general deductions. He calls attention to the circumstance that phrenogamous flowering plants (grasses) approach 17t0 nearer to the Northern than to the Southern Pole. In the Falkland Islands, near the thick masses of Tussack grass (Dactylis crespitosa, Forster, according to Kunth a Festuca), and in Tierra del Fuego or Fuegia, under the shade of the birch-leaved Fagus antarctica, there grows the same Trisetum subspicatum which extends over the whole range of the Peruvian Cordilleras, and over the Rocky Mountains to Melville Island, Greenland, and Iceland, and which is also found in the Swiss and Tyrolese Alps, in the Altai mountains, in Kamtschatka, and in Campbell Island, south of New Zealand; therefore, from 54° south to 74t0 north latitude, or through 128t0 of latitude. "Few grasses," says Joseph Hooker, in his Flora Antarctica, p. 97, "have so wide a range as Trisetum subspicatum (Beauv.), nor am I acquainted with any other Arctic species which is equally an inhabitant of the opposite polar regions." The South Shetland Islands, which are divided by Bransfield Strait from D'Urville's Terre de Louis Philippe and the Volcano of Haddington Peak, situated in 64° 12' south latitude, and 7046 English feet high, have been very recently visited by a Botanist from the United States of North America, Dr. Eights. He found there (probably in 62° or 62t0 S. latitude) a small grass, Aira antarctica (Hooker, Icon. Plant. vol. ii. tab. 150), which is "the most antarctic flowering plant hitherto discovered." In Deception Island, of the same group, S. lat. 62° 50', lichens only are found, and not a single species of grass; and so also, farther to the south-east, in Cockburn Island (lat. 64° 12'), near Palmer's Land, there were only found Lecanoras, Lecideas, and five Mosses, among which was our German Bryum argenteum : "this seems to be the ultima Thule of antarctic vegetation." Farther to the south, land-cryptogamic, as well as phrenogamic, vegetation is entirely wanting. In the great bay formed by Victoria Land, on a small island which lies opposite to Mount Herschel (S. lat. 71° 49'), and in Franklin Island, 92 geographical miles North of the great volcano 30* |
