Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/331

] the south of New Zealand, also with that of the Falklands, South Georgia, Tristan d'Acunha, and Kerguelen Island. All these countries, though the latter is distant more than 5,000 miles, seem to have borrowed many plants from this, the great botanical centre of the Antarctic Ocean. And it is a still more surprising fact, that the vegetation of Fuegia includes a considerable number of English plants; though 106 degrees of ocean roll between, and some of the species in question inhabit no intermediate latitudes.

"Like Lord Auckland's and Campbell's Islands, Tierra del Fuego exhibits a luxuriance of vegetation which its rigorous climate and low annual temperature would not have led us to expect. The same cause effects this in both longitudes; namely, the absence of all sudden changes from heat to cold, and vice versâ. But though the individual species grow luxuriantly, they are by no means so beautiful as those of the beforementioned islands, lying only three degrees farther north. Thus, the Metrosideros, a shrub allied to the myrtle, and the white-flowered Dracophyllum, are replaced in Fuegia by almost flowerless beeches. Instead of three shrubby Veronicas, there is but one, which is identical with the Auckland Island species, viz. Veronica elliptica; first described and so called by Forster, who gathered it in New Zealand; but introduced into England from Cape Horn, and generally known by the name of V. decussata.