THE 



VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER, 



BOTANY. 



REPORT on the Botany of the Bermudas and various other Islands of the 

 Atlantic and Southern Oceans. By W. Botting Hemsley, A.L.S. 



THE BERMUDAS. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTES. 



Physical Conditions of the Islands. 



The Bermudas cousist of an irregular chain of islets twenty-five miles long and some- 

 what in the form of the letter J ; and, without counting the smaller rocks, they number 

 about one hundred, lying in the Western Atlantic, between 32° 14' and 32° 23' N. latitude, 

 and 64° 38' and 64° 53' W. longitude, thus being nearly 580 nautical miles from the nearest 

 land, Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. The principal islets are so close together that there 

 is continuous communication by bridges from St George Island in the north to Somerset 

 Island, nearly at the extremity of the curve at the other eud of the chain. Bermuda itself, 

 the largest island, is nowhere more than three miles across, and the highest land in the group 

 does not exceed 250 feet above the level of the sea. The coast is either rocky, presenting an 

 irregular surface of weather-worn calcareous sandstone, or sandy, the sand being blown up 

 into dunes covering extensive tracts. In the interior hollows are peat-bogs or marshes of 

 considerable area ; yet there is nowhere a running stream, or even so much as a permanent 

 pond or pool. It has been stated l that there is not a trace of a stream or pool, or even of 

 a ditch, the rain sinking through the soil where it falls as it might through a sieve ; but 

 it must be otherwise at certain seasons, for Mr Moseley 2 says that sheets of shallow water, 

 sometimes as much as a quarter of a mile long, occur in some of the valleys and hollows 

 inland. Several of them were passed on the road from Hamilton to Somerset Island. 



1 Sir Wyville Thomson in Xature, vol. viii. p. 267. 2 Jouni. Linn. Soe. Lond., vol. xiv. p. 319. 



(bot. chalt,. exp. — part i. — 1884.) A 1 



