26 NATURAL SCIENCE. July, 



The expedition has, then, not only made a great advance in our 

 knowledge of the flora of the sea, but it has made exact and calculated 

 work possible in the future. It has pointed out unmistakably what 

 the next marine expedition has to do — whether it leave our shores 

 for the Antarctic seas, or be a mere traverse of the Atlantic for biolo- 

 gical purposes. 



George Murray. 



The Land Flora. 



The object of the voyage of the " Challenger " was " to investigate 

 scientifically the physical conditions and natural history of the deep 

 sea all over the world." Among the scientific staff on board was no 

 one specially set aside to collect plants and make botanic observations. 

 H. N. Moseley was appointed as a zoologist, but he was more than a 

 zoologist — he was a naturalist ; indeed, though he did not profess 

 botany, he had a considerable technical knowledge of the subject and 

 an intense interest in the wider problems of geographic and geologic 

 distribution on which botany throws special light. He took his own 

 view of his duties from a study of the Naturalist of the " Beagle." 

 At the end of his " Notes of the Voyage " he summarises in these 

 words: "The deep sea, its physical features, and its fauna, will 

 remain for an indefinite period in the condition in which they now 

 exist, and as they have existed for ages past with little or no change, 

 to be investigated at leisure at any future time. On the surface of 

 the earth, however, animals and plants and races of men are perishing 

 rapidly day by day, and will soon be, like the Dodo, things of the 

 past. The history of these things once gone can never be recovered, 

 but must remain for ever a gap in the knowledge of mankind. . . 

 Insular floras and faunas will soon pass away." With these views, 

 Moseley worked his hardest while the " Challenger " was in harbour; 

 out of the three-and-a-half years' cruise he got 520 days on shore. 

 But a very large portion of this time was spent in well-inhabited 

 ports, such as Funchal, Bahia, Melbourne, which afforded no specially 

 favourable opportunity for study of the indigenous element of the 

 flora. The Admiralty Islands he was the first to explore botanically, 

 and he collected 69 species although he only got a week there ; nor 

 did he get a longer stay at the interesting Marion group, where he 

 was also the earliest collector. In such short visits a botanist can 

 only collect the plants of one season of the year found on a fraction 

 of the area. 



Moseley by no means confined his botanic work to collecting ; in 

 his Notes are recorded numerous observations, especially with 

 reference to the transport of new species of plants to an oceanic 

 island. He notes the arrival in the sea of the beans of Guilandina 

 Boiiditc, and their growing into shrubs on the sea-shore of West 

 Indian islands. He also noted that large trees float in the sea laden 

 with earth, so that some branches remain altogether in the air ; on 



