Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/19

Rh was favorable to certain large fungus growths on the trees, and used as food by the natives.

The chief constituents of the Magellan forest are the Antarctic beech, the evergreen beech, and the "winters bark (of the magnolia order) with laurel-shaped leaves nearly four inches long. A socalled cypress is conspicuously abundant along the western channels.

It was new and rich ground for the scientific prospector. The naturalists were not to be deterred by the weather, but penetrated the narrow side channels in the ship's boats, shooting, fishing, botanizing, shore-collecting at low tide, photographing, hammering mesozoic fossils from the rocks, digging in the ancient shell-heaps of the aborigines and bartering with the natives.

Suitable beaches for dragging the seines were not easy to find, but the sailors usually secured enough smelt and mullet-like fishes for the table and a considerable variety of finny oddities for the ichthyologist's alcohol tanks. The naval officers found sport for their trout rods, in taking a trout-like fish abundant in the small streams. They insisted on calling it a trout, but this peculiar genus, Haplochiton, of the austral fresh waters differs noticeably from the boreal fish in lacking the adipose fin of the true trouts. To the angler it is equally gamy. The ichthyologist ignoring the rules of the true sportsman, swept many of the best pools with his nets. His "specimens," it is needless to relate, did not appear upon the mess table, much to the protest of the anglers.

Collecting along shore at low tide yielded many interesting invertebrates. A univalve of the genus Concholepas clings to the rocks like a limpet. It is as large as a man's fist and deep enough for a drinking cup. I saw one in a canoe where it may have been used as a boat bailer. It is also said to be used by the natives as food. The large Chilian mussel is abundant and seems to be the principal item in the food supply of the natives. We found it excellent eating and obtained specimens fully seven inches long. The handsomest sea shell of the straits is Voluta Magellanica, which reaches a length equal to that of the large mussel.

The most interesting crustacean was an isopod of the genus Serolis, which bears a superficial resemblance to the extinct trilobites and here takes the place of our North American horseshoe crab as a notable zoological type. We obtained specimens of it in many localities along shore and also in our dredge hauls.

We were scarcely prepared to find frogs in this latitude, but four