Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/243

] last-visited island, but in a very stunted state, form a verdant line close to the beach. This is succeeded by bright green slopes, so studded with the Chrysobactron as to give them a yellow tinge, visible a full mile from the shore. Most of the beautiful plants of Lord Auckland's group, including the elegant caulescent ferns, are equally abundant here, and from many of them growing in this higher latitude at a proportionally lower elevation, their beauty strikes every one on first landing.

"The stay of the expedition here was necessarily very short, and though two days sufficed to collect between 200 and 300 species, the island cannot be considered as sufficiently explored to justify any rigid numerical comparison between its Flora and that of the Aucklands; still some few relative observations may be offered. Sixty-six flowering plants were detected, of which fourteen were not seen in the neighbouring group. Thus, in two degrees of latitude, thirty-four species had disappeared from the Flora of this longitude, and been replaced by at least twenty other plants, producing as great a concomitant change in the proportions of the two groups of flowering plants as was to be expected from the higher latitude. The new species are almost all typical of an antarctic climate, and consist both of species confined to the island, and of others hitherto considered peculiar to Antarctic America. The proportion of monocotyledonous plants is increased from being 1:2.2, to 1:1.4. The grasses, instead of bearing