Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/195

 *[Footnote: 62-1/4°, S. latitude) a small grass, Aira antarctica (Hooker, Icon. Plant. Vol. ii. Tab. 150) which is "the most antarctic flowering plant hitherto discovered."

In Deception Island, of the same group, S. lat. 62° 50´, lichens only are found, and not a single species of grass; and so also farther to the south-east, in Cockburn Island (lat. 64° 12´), near Palmer's Land, there were only found Lecanoras, Lecideas, and five Mosses, among which was our German Bryum argenteum: this seems to be the ultima Thule of antarctic vegetation." Farther to the south, land-cryptogamic, as well as phænogamic, vegetation is entirely wanting. In the great bay formed by Victoria Land, on a small island which lies opposite to Mount Herschel (S. lat. 71° 49´), and in Franklin Island, 92 geographical miles North of the great volcano Mount Erebus, 12400 English feet high (latitude 76° 7´ South), Hooker found not a single trace of vegetable life. It is quite different in respect to the extension even of the forms of higher vegetable organisation in the high northern latitudes. Phænogamous plants there approach 18-1/2° nearer to the pole than in the southern hemisphere: Walden Island (N. lat. 80-1/2°) has still ten species. The antarctic phænogamous vegetation is also poorer in species at corresponding distances from the pole (Iceland has five times as many flowering plants as the southern group of Auckland and Campbell Islands), but this less varied antarctic vegetation is from climatic reasons more luxuriant and succulent. (Compare Hooker, Flora antarctica, p. vii., 74, and 215, with Sir James Ross, Voyage in the Southern and Antarctic Regions, 1839-1843, Vol. ii. p. 335-342.)]