REPORT ON THE BOTANY OF THE ISLANDS OF THE SOUTHERN OCEAN. 251 



History of Botanical Discovery in Kerguelen, &c. 

 Before the visit of the Challenger Expedition nothing whatever was known of the vege- 

 tation of Heard and Marion Islands ; and although many of the characteristic vascular plants 

 of the region were collected in Kerguelen as long ago as 17G6 by Mr Anderson, surgeon 

 of the " Besolution," commanded by Captain Cook, yet they lay almost unknown until Dr 

 (now Sir Joseph) Hooker described them after his return with Sir James Ross's Antarctic 

 Expedition, in 1843. There were among them : — Azorella selago, Cotula plumosa, Pringlea 

 antiscorbutica, Ranunculus crassijies, Poa cookii, and Deschampsia antarctica. 



"From 1776 till 1840" — we are now quoting Sir Joseph Hooker 1 — "when the Antarctic 

 Expedition, under Captain (afterwards Admiral Sir James) Ross, anchored in Christmas Harbour, 

 Kerguelen Island is not known to have been visited by any ship of war, or by the discovery or 

 surveying ships of any nation, though it had become the frequent resort of English and American 

 sealers. During the staj^ of the Antarctic Expedition [of which Sir Joseph Hooker was botanist], 

 all the plants enumerated by Anderson as found by him in mid-summer were refound in mid-winter, 

 together with many more,'amounting to nearly one hundred and fifty, of which eighteen were flowering 

 plants, the other large classes being — mosses and hepaticse, thirty-five ; lichens, twenty-five ; and alga', 

 fifty-one. These have all been described in the botany of the voyage (Flora Antarctica, 1817). 



" The next visit of naturalists to Kerguelen Island was that of the Challenger Expedition in 

 January and February 1874, when Mr Moseley collected most diligently, both in Christmas Harbour 

 and on the coast sixty to seventy miles south-east of it. He found twenty-three flowering plants in 

 all, including three European species {Cerastiicm triviale, Poa pratcnsis, and Poa annua), and three 

 species not in the collections of the Antarctic Expedition — namely, two Ranunculi and an Uncinia. 

 He also procured flowering specimens of the Pringlea and the Lyallia, and made large accessions to 

 the cryptogamic flora, especially on the southern localities visited." 



Subsequently, in the same year, and nearly contemporaneously, the naturalists attached 

 to various expeditions which were stationed there to observe the transit of Venus, collected 

 in Kerguelen, but they added, we believe, no novelties to the vascular plants. 



Composition of the Flora. 

 The flora of Marion, the Crozets, Kerguelen and Heard Islands belongs wholly to that 

 characteristic of the coldest regions where vascular plants exist in the southern hemi- 

 sphere, and differs considerably from that of the Tristan da Cunha group and St Faul and 

 Amsterdam Islands, at least as far as the vascular plants are concerned. It is usually 

 termed Antarctic in contradistinction to Arctic, but it should be borne in mind that no 

 vascular plants have been found within the Antarctic Circle, nor indeed within some degrees 

 of it. Neither a tree nor a shrub exists, the nearest approach to the latter being the very 

 dwarf, densely-tufted plants such as Colobanihus, Lyallia, and Azorella. Altogether only 

 thirty species of vascular plants have been discovered in these islands. Of these twenty - 



1 Phil. Trans. Roy. Sue. Lond., clxviii. 



