260 FLORA ANTARCTICA. [Fuegia, the 



country between Valparaiso and south latitude 45° on the west coast of South America, and between South Brazil 

 and Bahia Blanca on the east, also found on the intervening Cordillera and shores of the river Parana. 



3. Lathykus maritimus, Big. Ft. Boston, vol. ii. p. 268. Hook. Brit. Ft. ed. 5. p. 90. Pisum ma- 

 ritimum, Linn. Sp. PI. 1027. DC. Prodr. vol. ii. p. 368. Engl. Bot. t. 1046. Lathyrus piriformis, Hook. 

 Flor. Bor. Am. vol. i. p. 1 58. 



Hab. Cape Tres Montes ; C. Barivin, Esq. 



A most attentive comparison of Mr. Darwin's plant with European specimens of Lathyrus maritimus has forced 

 upon me the conclusion, that this species, so very common in many parts of the north temperate and frigid zone, only 

 inhabits in the south one of the most remote and little-visited spots of the American continent. The nature of the 

 vegetation in the Peninsula of Tres Montes with the absence of other introduced plants forbid the supposition that this 

 could have been imported, even were it in common cultivation either as an ornamental or culinary herb. No one, 

 indeed, can read the accounts given by our voyagers of that wild and desolate portion of the west coast of Patagonia, 

 (well known from being the scene of the " Narrative of what befell the Anna Pink," *) without a conviction that it 

 is the last place in the world where an introduced vegetation may be expected. Mr. Darwinf remarks that the 

 Indian race is extinct there, and such is the unfrequented appearance of the coast, that a piece of wood with a nail in 

 it is picked up and studied as if covered with hieroglyphics ; doubtless with feelings in which any one can participate 

 who has unexpectedly fallen in with a work of art on a hitherto untrodden shore, and which vividly recall the page 

 and the Hue of Defoe's unrivalled work, where the youthful reader is as startled to read of, as Robinson Crusoe was. to 

 see, " the footstep of a man in the sand." 



Cape Tres Montes is also described by Capt. Fitzroy as another Tierra del Fuego, " a place swampy with rain, 

 tormented by storms, without even the interest of population, for hitherto we had neither found the traces nor heard 

 the voice of natives," j Three deserters, whose open boat, their last remaining hope of reaching civilization, had 

 failed them, lived for thirteen months here on seal's flesh, wild celery and shell-fish, unable to pursue their journey 

 by land, so rugged are the shores and so impervious the low forests. Such is the nature of the coast where 

 alone in the southern hemisphere this plant grows, though apparently not so abundantly as on the beach in some 

 parts of England, else the sailors in question might have improved their daily fare, for Dr. Caius says, that 

 Lathyrus maritimus, during the famine of 1556, afforded nourishment to thousands of the people upon the Suf- 

 folk coast, who had overlooked it while in their prosperity, and when driven by hunger to seek some manna 

 in the wilderness, deemed its appearance miraculous ; so ready, as Sir James Smith observes, is man to remember 

 his Maker when in distress, whilst at other times he neglects what, like the best gifts of Providence, is always within 

 his reach. 



Being very much a maritime plant and one of a quickly propagated tribe, it is not surprising that L. maritimus 

 enjoys a widely extended range in the northern hemisphere. Still there are some peculiarities worthy of notice, even 

 here, in its distribution. In Great Britain, though abundant wherever it does grow, the plant is singularly local ; a 

 few spots on the east and south coasts are its sole recorded habitats ; the Shetland Islands, where an Arctic variety 

 is seen, being its only Scottish, and Kerry its only Irish station. It is also a native of Iceland and Greenland. The 

 English Channel seems its southern European limit§, whence it passes along the shores of Belgium and up the 

 Baltic Sea and inhabits the east coast of ^Norway as far as 70°, becoming more frequent beyond the parallel of 60° 



* The 'Anna Pink ' was one of the squadron which accompanied Commodore Anson's disastrous Expedition, 

 t Darwin's Journal in Murray's Home and Colonial Library, p. 282. 

 X Voy. of the Adventure and Beagle, vol. ii. p. 370. 



§ De Candolle gives Nice on the Mediterranean as a station, which I have not seen confirmed, (Bot. Gall, 

 vol. iv.p. 586). 



