Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/309

] number of months required to ensure a profitable return is not in the same ratio.

"There are few plants which, from perfect obscurity, have become objects of such interest as this grass. The Tussock in its native state seems of almost no service in the animal economy. A little insect, and only one that I observed, depends on it for sustenance; and a bird, no bigger than a sparrow, robs it of its seeds; a few sea-fowl build amongst the shelter of its leaves; penguins and petrels seek hiding-places amongst the roots, because these are soft and easily penetrated; and sea-lions cower beneath its luxuriant foliage: still, except the insect, I know no animal or plant whose extinction could follow the absence of this, the largest vegetable production in the Falklands, which does not support even a parasitical fungus. These same sea birds breed and burrow where no Tussock grows; rocks, elsewhere, suit the sea-lion's habits equally well; and the sparrow, which subsists on other food eleven months of the year, could surely make shift without this for a twelfth. Certain it is, that the Tussock might yet be unknown and unprized amongst plants, if cattle had not been introduced into its locality by man; who thus became, first the injurer, and then the protector and propagator of the existence of this noble grass: for the herbaceous quadrupeds which he carried to the Falklands, and left there, were surely extirpating the Tussock, when man returned, and, by