Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/194

 *[Footnote: To my young friend Joseph Hooker, who, but just returned with Sir James Ross from the frozen antarctic regions, is now exploring the Thibetian portion of the Himalaya, the geography of plants is indebted not only for a great mass of important materials, but also for excellent general deductions. He calls attention to the circumstance that phænogamous flowering plants (grasses) approach 17-1/2° nearer to the Northern than to the Southern pole. In the Falkland Islands near the thick masses of Tussack grass (Dactylis cæspitosa, Forster, according to Kunth a Festuca), and in Tierra del Fuego or Fuegia, under the shade of the birch-leaved Fagus antarctica, there grows the same Trisetum subspicatum which extends over the whole range of the Peruvian Cordilleras, and over the Rocky Mountains to Melville Island, Greenland, and Iceland, and which is also found in the Swiss and Tyrolese Alps, in the Altai mountains, in Kamtschatka, and in Campbell Island, south of New Zealand; therefore, from 54° South to 74-1/2° North latitude, or through 128-1/2° of latitude. "Few grasses," says Joseph Hooker, in his Flora Antarctica, p. 97, "have so wide a range as Trisetum subspicatum, (Beauv.) nor am I acquainted with any other Arctic species which is equally an inhabitant of the opposite polar regions." The South Shetland Islands, which are divided by Bransfield Strait from D'Urville's Terre de Louis Philippe and the Volcano of Haddington Peak, situated in 64° 12´ South latitude and 7046 English feet high, have been very recently visited by a Botanist from the United States of North America, Dr. Eights. He found there (probably in 62° or]*