Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/225

] be to find new kinds of the pine, the birch, willow, or the oak, than those remarkable trees which have no allies in the northern hemisphere, and the mention of which, suggesting no familiar form to compare them with at home, can interest few but the professed botanist.

"The woods consist entirely of four or five species of trees, or large shrubs, which are here enumerated in the order of their relative abundance. 1. A short and thick-trunked tree (Metrosideros lucida), which branches at top into a broad crown; this is more nearly allied to the classical myrtle than to any other European plant. 2. Dracophyllum longifolium, (Fl. Antarct. xxxi. and xxxii.), a black-barked tree, with slender erect branches, bearing grassy leaves at the ends of the twigs. 3. Panax simplex, a tree allied to the ivy. 4. Veronica elliptica, this is the V. decussata of our gardens, a Tierra del Fuego plant, but which was originally detected in New Zealand, during Cook's second voyage. 5. A species of Coprosma (C. fœtidissima,  xiii.), whose leaves emit when bruised, and especially in drying, an intolerably fœtid odour. Under the shade of these, near the sea beach, about fifteen different Ferns grow in great abundance, the most remarkable of which is a species of Aspidium (A. venustum, of the French South Polar Voyage), with short trunks