148 FAGUS ANTARCTICA OF FORSTER. 
alluded to in the “ Geography of Terra del Fuego and the 
Straits of Magalhaens,"* by Capt. King himself, when, 
speaking of Mesier Channel, he says, ‘the trees here are 
nearly of the same description as those which are found in 
all parts between Cape Tres Montes and the Strait of Magal- 
haens. Of these, the most common are an evergreen Beech, 
( Fagus betuloides) and a birch-like Beech, (Fagus antarctica)” 
&c.—The Fagus betuloides, Capt. King informs us, grows to 
_ a very large size: one tree, supposed to be the same as that — 
noticed by Commodore Byron at Port Famine, measured | : 
** seven feet in diameter, at seventeen feet above the roots, - 
and there divides into three large branches, each of which is — 
three feet through." This is a circumstance that would not 
be anticipated from the appearance of the specimens in our 
Herbarium, whose short branches, and small and closely 
placed evergreen leaves, give the idea of a dwarf and very — 
compact shrub. The size to which the F. antarctica attains, — 
Capt. King does not state; but from a passage in the memoir 
just quoted, it would seem to constitute a tree of no small t 
dimensions. “ Besides the evergreen Beech (F. betuloides;) 
above-mentioned, there are few other trees in the Strait a 
that can be considered as timber. Such an appellation only m 
belongs to two other species of beech and the Winter’s Bark. — 
. Of these two other kinds of Beech, the one is no doubt the a 
species in question, (F. antarctica).and the second is what I : 
take to be the Betula antarctica, Forster, as shown by spec — 
mens in my own Herbarium, gathered during the same 
voyage, and marked ** Beech from Port Famine," and which 
are precisely the same as a Betula or Fagusin my possession — 
without name, gathered by Forster in the Straits of Magal- * 
haens, and which sufficiently accords with Willdenow's brief * 
character of the Betula antarctica. It must be confessed in- 
deed, that this plant does come very near the Fagus betuloides — 
_ of Mirbel, yet I think it is distinct, at least as to species; and 
_ the flower and fruit being unknown (apparently) to Forster» 
p. 160, 
-— 
* Iu the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol I- 
