Page:The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage.djvu/253

Falklands, etc.] matter, everywhere covers a soil so heated that the roots cannot descend beyond a few inches. Sir G. Staunton mentions that changes in the level of the land at the mouth of the cove have occurred since 1697, when the island was landed upon by Van Vlaming, a Dutch commander. Since 1793, the period of Sir G. Staunton's visit to the island, half a century has elapsed, and the changes, if any, have been insignificant. The land may possibly be rising, though according to Van Vlaming it must have sunk since his time, when there was no communication between the sea and the lagoon, the intermediate causeway being at least five feet high. Staunton states the depth of water on the bar to be eight feet at high water, and Lieut. Smith as 7 ft. 4 in. at the highest spring tides. Nor does the temperature of the hot springs appear to have altered materially during the last fifty years, it then averaged 190°, and Mr. Smith found one that he tried to be 182° (though there are others where the temperature rises to 212°); the latter gentleman boiled both fish and rice in one of these springs close to the ocean's edge and they were well cooked in twelve minutes, thus confirming Sir G. Staunton's anecdote, that a person who had caught fish in the cold water of the lagoon could, with a slight motion of his hand, let it drop into a hot adjoining spring, when it would be boiled in fifteen minutes fit for eating (McCartney's Embassy, vol. i. p. 212), an account that has been treated as fabulous.

The island of St. Paul, only fifty miles farther north, has never been visited by a naturalist; it is mentioned by several authorities as low and undulating, covered with trees and shrubs, but with no traces of internal heat; Labillardiere, who passed this island in 1792, describes it as being in a state of combustion, but he doubts whether the fires were kindled by the hand of man, or were owing to subterranean heat. The former is most probably the case, for Mr. Smith, who lost no opportunity of gaining information about these curious islands, gives me the following statement, obtained from some sealers who had visited St. Paid's. "A variety of plants grow luxuriantly in the northern of these two islands, and trees several inches in diameter; there are no hot springs there, nor is its earth at all heated; vegetables may be cultivated with tolerable success; but this island is always most difficult to land upon." This precisely tallies with other scattered notices of St. Paid's that I have seen.

I shall conclude this long digression with a notice of the vegetable productions of Amsterdam Island. Sir G. Staunton mentions a Lycopodium, a Marchantia, and a long grass; to these I can now add another species of grass, a Plantago, Colobanthus, an Azorella? (or Ranunculus?) a Cenomyce, and several species of Mosses. The Colobanthus is typical of a southern or Antarctic Flora; but the grasses appear more characteristic of a warmer climate; from these materials I do not feel justified in referring the vegetation to any botanical region, but consider it probable that there may be a considerable proportion of forms indicative of a warm latitude, especially in St. Paid's.

The number of species in the present Part precludes the introduction of lengthened descriptions, even were these as requisite as I deemed them in the case of the more novel