Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/378

336 of Cape Horn, beyond the sixtieth degree of latitude. The number of plants ascertained to inhabit them hardly exceeds twenty-six; and one of these, a grass, the only flowering plant, does not pass the sixty-second degree; nor, consequently, reach that island, to whose vegetation the following observations more immediately refer. Previous to the voyage of the "Erebus and Terror," almost nothing was known of the vegetation which approaches nearest to the Antarctic Pole. We had yet to learn whether a flora, so situated, would be found to consist of plants which inhabit the elevated and comparatively rigorous regions of a milder clime; or of those growing in a similar latitude of the opposite hemisphere; or finally, if Nature had not there produced new and isolated species, adapted to the peculiarities of the locality.

"The Flora of Cockburn Island contains nineteen species, all belonging to the orders, Mosses, Algae, and Lichens. Twelve are terrestrial; three inhabit either fresh water or very moist ground; and four are confined to the surrounding Ocean. Of these nineteen plants, seven are restricted to the island in question, having been hitherto found nowhere else (besides an eighth, which is a variety of a well known species); the others grow in various parts of the globe, some being widely diffused.

"The greatest amount of novelty is found here, as in other cryptogamic floras, among the most highly organized class: for example, of the Mosses,