Page:The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage.djvu/422

386 There is, however, one draw-back to the value of the Tussock; it is a perennial grass, of slow growth, and some disappointment has already been experienced in England from this cause. Each Tussock consists of many hundreds of culms, springing together from a mass of roots, which have required a long series of years to attain their great and productive size. Oar cultivated specimens in the Royal Gardens of Kew, now nearly three years old, are in a fair way of becoming good Tussocks; for the quantity of stems from eirch root, the produce of one seed, is incalculably more than any other grass throws np, and these are already forming a ball of root-fibres which in time will form a mound ; but this ball, now scarcely sis inches across and not two in height, must have grown to six or eight feet high, with a diameter of three or four feet ; instead of forty culms there must be four hundred; and the leaves, now three feet long, must attain seven; ere the Tussock of England can compete with its parent in the Falklands. Though, however, the stoles (if I may so call the matted roots of this grass) in the most vigorous native specimens attain a height of seven feet, it is certain that they are very productive before they have reached two or three. By the time the leaves have gained their great size, the bases of the culms are nearly as broad as the thumb, and when pulled out young, they yield an inch or two of a soft, white, and swi et substance, of the flavour of a nut, and so nutritious, that two American sealers, who deserted a vessel in an unfrequented part of the Falklands, subsisted on little else for fourteen months.

Again, the Tussock-grass field, when fully established, must not be grazed indiscriminately by cattle. These creatures and the pigs have already diminished its abundance in the Falklands; for, after devouring the foliage, they eat down the stumps of the culms, greedily following them into the heart of the mass of roots from which they spring, for the sake of the white core just described; the rain-water lodges in the cavity thus formed, and decay so surely follows, that I have seen nearly half a mile of Tussock-grass plants entirely destroyed by no other means.

Although in the Falklands this plant will grow on pure sand near the sea, and there reach as great a size as on any other soil, it is not likely to do so in the drier climate of Britain, where the absence of an equally humid atmosphere must be artificially remedied. A wet, light, peaty soil has in England been found to favour its growth; sea-weed manure might probably be added with advantage, and certainly guano. Slow its progress assuredly is, but it may be hastened by such stimulants. In the mean time the cultivator has no just cause for complaint; the plant is already increasing unusually at the base, and thence sending up many more culms than other grasses, though, springing from one small base, they do not make such a show, but form a compact mass of living roots which in the case of other Gramineæ would spread over ten times the area that this occupies, and they annually increase in vigour and productiveness. And, lastly, it must be borne in mind that the farmer here obtains an enormous crop from a very small surface. Each great Tussock is the produce of one seed and is an isolated individual plant, which, though standing upon perhaps only two square yards of ground, yields annually a produce equal to that of a much greater surface of land, if cropped with hay or clover. The number of seeds required to stock an acre in Tussock and one in grass is in the proportion of tens to thousands; and we may be well content to know that the number of months required to ensure a profitable return is not in the same ratio.

There are few plants which from perfect obscurity have become objects of such interest as this grass. The Tussock in its native state seems of almost no service in the animal economy. A little insect, and only one that I observed, depends on it for sustenance; and a bird, no bigger than the sparrow, robs it of its seeds; a few sea-fowl build amongst the shelter of its leaves: penguins and petrel seek hiding-places amongst the roots, because they are soft and easily penetrated, and Sea-lions cower beneath its luxuriant foliage: still, except the insect, I know no animal or plant whose extinction could follow the absence of this, the largest vegetable production in the Falklands, which does not even support a parasitical fungus. These same sea-birds breed and burrow where no Tussock grows; rocks elsewhere suit the Sea-lion's habits equally well; and the sparrow, which subsists on other food eleven months of the year, could surely make shift without this for a twelfth. Certain it is, that the Tussock might yet be unknown and unprized amongst plants, if cattle had not been introduced to its locality by man;