Page:The birds of Tierra del Fuego - Richard Crawshay.djvu/42

xxii that, except for large tree trunks, it is impossible to see what lies beneath. Clambering over these, long since decayed and become the consistency of soft mould, it is a common thing to sink in up to the hips. "No soil is to be discovered," Lieutenant Sky ring very aptly remarks; "the shrubs, and even the trees which are of large growth, rise out of Moss, or decomposed vegetable substances."

The Algæ include the gigantic Macrocystis pyrifera, not only the greatest of all Seaweeds, but the longest growth known in all the vegetable kingdom. It attains a length of many hundred feet, growing from the bottom in deep water and trailing along the surface. Other very large Seaweeds of this region are Durvillea and Lessonia. Red Seaweeds are represented by several species of Delesseria and Nitophyllum. The green Lettuce-like widely-distributed Ulva latissima, of course, occurs.

Of Macrocystis Sir Joseph Hooker says, as the result ol his observations on the "Erebus" and "Terror" Antarctic Expedition:—"In the Falkland Islands. Cape Horn, and Kerguelen's Land, where all the harbours are so belted with its masses that a boat can hardly be forced through, it generally rises from eight to twelve fathom water, and the fronds extend upwards of one hundred feet upon the surface. We seldom, however, had opportunities of measuring the largest specimens, though washed up entire on the shore; for on the outer coasts of the Falkland Islands, where the beach is lined for miles with entangled cables of Macrocystis, much thicker than the human body, and twined of innumerable strands of stems coiled together by the rolling action of the surf, no one succeeded in unravelling from the mass any one piece upwards of seventy or eighty feet long; as well might we attempt to ascertain the length of hemp fibre by unlaying a cable." The greatest length arrived at by the expedition was about seven hundred feet; but, far larger growths than this were observed at an earlier period, and not measured for want of opportunity—nor were these thought anything extraordinary, in view of the report that Macrocystis