Page:The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage.djvu/241





First Part of the Botany of the Antarctic Voyage is devoted to the vegetation of a few islands, containing plants so peculiar, and differing so remarkably from those of the other South Polar Islands as to render it advisable that they should be described by themselves, and should form a distinct and separate Flora. A review of this Flora, now completed, shows the vegetation of Lord Auckland's group and Campbell's Island to be, in some measure, a continuation of that of New Zealand. This fact might have been inferred from the geographical position of those islands, which are moreover the only countries known where the peculiar features of the Polynesian Flora are represented by species characteristic of an Antarctic climate; such features being indicated chiefly by the paucity of Compositæ and predominance of some shrubby Rubiaceæ.

The pages of the present portion of the work are destined to contain descriptions of all the plants ascertained to exist in what we may term the Antarctic regions, (Lord Auckland's and Campbell's Islands excepted), viz. Fuegia and some part of the south-west coast of Patagonia, the Falkland Islands, Palmer's Land, and the adjoining groups, as the South Shetlands, South Georgia, &c., and (proceeding eastward) Tristan d'Acunha and Kerguelen's Land. I shall preface the Flora of these widely severed, and in some cases very isolated spots, with a few remarks upon each, and on the general character of the whole as forming one great botanical region.

It may appear paradoxical, at first sight, to associate the plants of Kerguelen's Land with