Page:The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage.djvu/292

260 country between Valparaiso and south latitude 45° on the west coast of South America, and between South Brazil and Bahia Blanca on the east, also found on the intervening Cordillera and shores of the river Parana.

3. maritimus, Big. Fl. Boston, vol. ii. p. 268. ''Hook. Brit. Fl''. ed. 5. p. 90. Pisum maritimum, ''Linn. Sp. Pl''. 1027. ''DC. Prodr.'' vol. ii. p. 368. ''Engl. Bot''. t. 1046. Lathyrus piriformis, ''Hook. Flor. Bor. Am''. vol. i. p. 1 58.

Cape Tres Montes; C. Darwin, Esq.

A most attentive comparison of Mr. Darwin's plant with European specimens of Lathyrus maritimus has forced upon me the conclusion, that this species, so very common in many parts of the north temperate and frigid zone, only inhabits in the south one of the most remote and little-visited spots of the American continent. The nature of the vegetation in the Peninsula of Tres Montes with the absence of other introduced plants forbid the supposition that this could have been imported, even were it in common cultivation either as an ornamental or culinary herb. No one, indeed, can read the accounts given by our voyagers of that wild and desolate portion of the west coast of Patagonia, (well known from being the scene of the "Narrative of what befell the Anna Pink," ) without a conviction that it is the last place in the world where an introduced vegetation may be expected. Mr. Darwin remarks that the Indian race is extinct there, and such is the unfrequented appearance of the coast, that a piece of wood with a nail in it is picked up and studied as if covered with hieroglyphics; doubtless with feelings in which any one can participate who has unexpectedly fallen in with a work of art on a hitherto untrodden shore, and which vividly recall the page and the Hue of Defoe's unrivalled work, where the youthful reader is as startled to read of, as Robinson Crusoe was. to see, "the footstep of a man in the sand."

Cape Tres Montes is also described by Capt. Fitzroy as another Tierra del Fuego, "a place swampy with rain, tormented by storms, without even the interest of population, for hitherto we had neither found the traces nor heard the voice of natives," Three deserters, whose open boat, their last remaining hope of reaching civilization, had failed them, lived for thirteen months here on seal's flesh, wild celery and shell-fish, unable to pursue their journey by land, so rugged are the shores and so impervious the low forests. Such is the nature of the coast where alone in the southern hemisphere this plant grows, though apparently not so abundantly as on the beach in some parts of England, else the sailors in question might have improved their daily fare, for Dr. Caius says, that Lathyrus maritimus, during the famine of 1556, afforded nourishment to thousands of the people upon the Suffolk coast, who had overlooked it while in their prosperity, and when driven by hunger to seek some manna in the wilderness, deemed its appearance miraculous; so ready, as Sir James Smith observes, is man to remember his Maker when in distress, whilst at other times he neglects what, like the best gifts of Providence, is always within his reach.

Being very much a maritime plant and one of a quickly propagated tribe, it is not surprising that L. maritimus enjoys a widely extended range in the northern hemisphere. Still there are some peculiarities worthy of notice, even here, in its distribution. In Great Britain, though abundant wherever it does grow, the plant is singularly local; a few spots on the east and south coasts are its sole recorded habitats; the Shetland Islands, where an Arctic variety is seen, being its only Scottish, and Kerry its only Irish station. It is also a native of Iceland and Greenland. The English Channel seems its southern European limit, whence it passes along the shores of Belgium and up the Baltic Sea and inhabits the east coast of Norway as far as 70°, becoming more frequent beyond the parallel of 60°