Staten Island and Cape Horn. 27 



honour of making, to practical results and utility. A paper 

 to this effect has been delivered to Captain Foster, with a col- 

 lection of seeds, plants, and specimens, to exemplify and cor- 

 roborate the statements I have made. It is almost unneces- 

 sary to state, that the plants of these regions will easily and 

 readily adapt themselves to the climate of England, requiring, 

 however, rather a moist soil. The vegetation of Staten 

 Island and Cape Horn, singularly enough, is composed almost 

 entirely of evergreens, among which, both from frequency and 

 size, the beech ranks first. T presume it to be the Fagus Antarc- 

 tica ; but having no systematic work with the character of the 

 species, I am precluded from speaking in this respect with ab- 

 solute certainty ; but this is of less consequence, as the speci- 

 mens themselves will afford the means of its being identified. 

 The evergreen beech clothes the country with forests of per- 

 petual verdure. When young it is a very pretty and orna- 

 mental shrub. It attains to a size of consid«rable magnitude. 

 The wood is not worthy of much praise. The bark contains 

 some tannin, and afforded us the means of converting the seal 

 skins into leather with very good effect. The leather has an 

 aromatic and agreeable smell. This beech is beset with a very 

 singular parasitic shrub, which engrafts itself on the branches 

 in a peculiar manner. I know not the name ; but there are 

 numerous specimens of it in fructification and seeds. Around 

 the summit of the trunk, and on some of the larger branches, 

 are frequently a congeries of orange-coloured globular smooth 

 fungi of the size of a small apple. When mature it opens on 

 the surface, and displays a honey-combed cellular structure. 

 The fungi are slimy, mucilaginous, and insipid. Where these 

 fungi are attached to the tree it becomes extremely knotted 

 and tuberculated, forming a very large hard knob. The wood 

 of this evergreen beech in decay undergoes a most singular 

 change, becoming throughout of a fine bright verdigrise green, 

 retaining its colour against the action of every agent, alkaline 

 or acid. It is not affected in any way by light or moisture. I 

 pulverized some and tried it as a paint, for which it seems ad- 

 mirably adapted, affording a good colour for any work, being 

 both durable and elegant. This decayed wood is not luminous 

 in the dark. It does not universally undergo this conversion, 



