Page:Transactions NZ Institute Volume 15.djvu/591

Rh mosses near the hill-tops, are all that strike the eye in looking at the island from the sea. This paucity of species is, as we shall see again, one of the characteristics of the flora of antarctic islands.

The rocks of the island belong to the older crystallines, greenstones. They have occasionally an amygdaloidal structure, the amygdules sometimes containing zeolites. Mesotype, with concentric radiated fibrous structure, occurs in one of my specimens; and in another, what is probably analcime, is to be seen. The rocks are sometimes veined with quartz.

Unfortunately the season at which I visited the island was not well suited for collecting plants. I was there in November and in these latitudes spring is but little advanced in that month. I therefore found comparatively few plants in flower. This of course has added much to the difficulty of identifying my specimens, and combined with the thick weather has helped to make my collection smaller than it might have been under more favourable circumstances. There are certain plants, common in the Campbell and Auckland Islands, which may, for these reasons, have been overlooked by me in Macquarie Island, such as the Anthericum rossii, a lily, whose golden flowers are said by Hooker to form a very striking object in a Campbell Island landscape; if present, however, it cannot be at all common. Another genus which one might expect to find, but which I did not meet with, is the Veronica. A plant so common in New Zealand and in the Campbell and Auckland Islands, at all elevations, ought surely to have some representative in Macquarie Island. I have little doubt but that my collection is imperfect, but even allowing largely for that, it shows that many species have disappeared which are common in the Auckland and Campbell Islands, and that those plants which are present have a much more stunted growth.

Those plants I did collect, however, are, with one exception (the Azorella selago), distinctly New Zealand in their characters, quite as much so as those belonging to the Auckland or Campbell Islands; and they also show that all these islands agree in having, in common with all other antarctic islands, a flora characterized by few species, but what there are, growing luxuriantly. This is very distinctly seen in Macquarie Island, where the number of species of flowering plants is certainly most limited, but where great areas are covered by a close growth of Stilbocarpa and Pleurophyllum.

It is curious to contrast the poverty of Macquarie Island in floweriug plants with the richness of countries in the northern hemisphere. The corresponding north latitude runs through the north of England; and even in islands in very much higher north latitudes, such as Spitzbergen, this greater richness in their flora is to be observed.