282 NOTES ON THE BOTANY 
two hundred and twenty square leagues. Part of the coast 
is bordered with rocks and denes, exhibiting towards the 
interior some mountains of moderate elevation, and plains 
covered with lakes and marshes. During the winter, which 
is long and very severe, snow falls to a depth of many feet. 
The surface-soil is composed of a spongy turf which begins 
where the coast-sand ends, and stretches uninterruptedly 
over the mountains and the level lands. This soil is most 
unfriendly to cultivation, and French, Spanish, and English 
colonists have successively given up the attempt in despair, 
and forsaken these islands. Still there are plants which affect 
peaty lands, and grow here abundantly. Not a tree is to be 
seen, the only approach to it being a shrub, the Veronica de- 
cussata,* which attains a height of 6 feet, but is extremely 
rare; it was originally detected by Commerson, in the Straits 
of Magelhaens, and named, in his MSS., Hebe Magellanica. 
The aspect and foliage resemble the myrtle.t Among the 
larger plants of the Falklands are Chiliotrichum amelloides, a 
syngenesious shrub, about 3 feet high; the Festuca flabellata 
(or Tussack Grass mentioned above), whose fine fan-shaped 
leaves are nearly 6 feet long, and which entirely covers the 
islets; and finally, Pernettia empetrifolia and Empetrum ru- 
brum, under-shrubs of moderate stature, already found by 
Commerson in the district of Magelhaens. The other plants 
seem as if they all had been levelled low, so rarely does one 
species rise, in the least, above the rest. They generally 
form compact, close, grassy tufts, very unpromising for the 
botanist. The prevailing tribes are Lichens, Ferns, Mosses, 
Cyperacee, Graminee, Composite and Ranunculacee. The 
Alge can hardly be considered as belonging to these islands, 
though they abound in the bays; they are marine produc- 
* This shrub is confined to West Falkland. 
T In Jersey, where this shrub is not uncommon 2 gardens and grows 
about three or four feet high, it is called Box- Myrtle. 
