Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/308

274 "Although in the Falklands this plant will grow on the fine sand near the sea, and there reach as great a size as on any other soil, it is not likely to do so in the drier climate of Britain, where the absence of an equally humid atmosphere must be artificially remedied. A wet, light, peaty soil has, in England, been found to favour its growth; sea-weed manure might probably be added with advantage, and certainly guano. Slow its progress assuredly is, but it may be hastened by such stimulants. In the meantime, the cultivator has no just cause for complaint; the plant is already increasing unusually at the base, and thence sending up many more culms than any other grass, though, springing from one small base, they do not make such a show, but form a compact mass of living roots, which, in the case of other gramineæ, would spread over ten times the area that this occupies, and they annually increase in vigour and productiveness; and, lastly, it must be borne in mind, that the farmer here obtains an enormous crop from a very small surface. Each great Tussock is the produce of one seed, and is an isolated individual plant, which, though standing perhaps upon only two square yards of ground, yields annually a produce equal to that of a much greater surface of land, if cropped with hay or clover. The number of seeds required to stock an acre in Tussock and one in grass, is in the proportion of tens to thousands; and we may be well content to know, that the