Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/336

300 "Fuegia is richer in Mosses than any other antarctic island: perhaps no part of the globe of equal extent yields more or finer species than Hermite Island. During the short stay of the Antarctic Expedition one hundred different kinds were found; and the naturalist, who is accustomed to collecting this tribe of plants, is well aware that a protracted search is needful in order to exhaust the Mosses of even a limited area. Polytrichum dendroides, the noblest of Mosses, forms a miniature forest in the woods. Seven species of Andræa occur; a genus which only four years before had been supposed peculiar to the northern hemisphere; but of which one kind has been since found at the Cape of Good Hope, the A. subulata, first detected by Dr. Harvey on Table Mountain, where it was also gathered by the officers of the Antarctic Expedition: others on Lord Auckland's group, Hermite Island, and Kerguelen Island; in Tasmania, and almost every antarctic island visited by the expedition; thus nearly trebling the number of species.

"There are very few esculent plants in Fuegia, and the natives use none of them except a Fungus, described by Mr. Darwin. They are, the celery, and a kind of scurvy-grass, also plentiful in the Falklands and Campbell's Island (Cardamine hirsuta). The fruits of a species of Currant, Barberry, Crowberry, Myrtle, and Bramble are eatable in tarts; the latter, indeed, is excellent, uncooked. The Tussock-grass is not so plentiful as on