Falklands, etc.] FLOBA ANTARCTICA. 455 



Hab. Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, and Kerguelen's Land ; very abundant at half-tide mark 

 and below it ; also in the open ocean, between lat. 45° and 55° S., reaching the 65th degree of south latitude 

 in the meridian of New Zealand. 



This, the Lessonia, and Maerocystis are the three most remarkable Alga of the Antarctic regions, especially on 

 account of their size ; the present exceeding any sea-weed, except the Lessonia and the Ecklonia buccinalis of the 

 Cape of Good Hope, in bulk ; while the Maerocystis, to which we shall afterwards allude, is the longest vegetable 

 production known. 



The nearest affinity of D' Urvillaa was considered, in the ' London Journal of Botauy' (vol. ii. p. 325), to be 

 with Himanthalia of the Northern and Arctic seas, an opinion to which one of us was led by observing how, in habit 

 and locality, these species represented each other in the opposite Polar oceans. Wahlenberg, Bory de St. Vincent and 

 Greville, all regard the curious pezizsefomi organ of Himanthalia as the frond, and the deciduous strap-shaped 

 lacimse as receptacles, which view is also maintained in the ' Phycologia Britannica' (t. lxxviii.) Lyngbye (the founder 

 of the species) and Agardh, on the other hand, pronounce the frond to be swollen at the base into a bladdery stipes, 

 furnished with strap-shaped laciniae, over whose surface the conceptacles are scattered as in D' Urvillaa ; and in 

 Xiphophora, a genus (as pointed out by Montague) nearly allied to the present, and which represents it in a lower 

 latitude of the Southern Ocean. In the ' London Journal of Botany' the true analogy to the bladder of Himanthalia 

 was sought in the trumpet-shaped stipes of Ecklonia buccinalis, but in that plant the growth of stipes and frond 

 proceeds from the earliest stage, pari-passu, whilst the bladder of Himanthalia is fully developed before the straps 

 appear. 



We have nowhere seen a good representation of the beautiful cellular tissue of D' Urvillaa utilis, which, in 

 its fresh state, is so regular and large as to resemble perfectly in size and structure one of the two layers of cells 

 found in honey-comb. Most of the specimens brought to Europe are injured by pressure, which can however 

 hardly have caused the total obliteration of structure which M. Bory's plate represents ; the most accurate figure we 

 know is given in the beautiful plate accompanying M. Decaisne's ' Essay on the fructification of Algae' . 



The spores of this and the following species are divided into four, and we cannot doubt but that this divi sion 

 is followed by the complete breaking up of the organ into four sporules, whose future germination resembles that 

 described by MM. Decaisne and Thuret in Fucus serratus ('Annales des Sc. Nat. ' Ser. 3. vol. iii. p. 10. t. 2). The 

 conceptacles contain probably both antheridia and spores, so far as we can judge from drawings taken from the bving 

 plant, though at the time these bodies were not recognized as belonging to two differents classes of organs. 



The northern limit of D 'Urvillaa will probably be found to be the latitude of Valparaiso, or 33° S., on the 

 West coast of South America, and 50° S., on the opposite shores of the same continent. In New Zealand it attains 

 the parallel of 40°, but whether it inhabits any of the shores of Tasmania, or is there represented by the Fucus 

 potatorum, is a question we cannot answer. Though carried by the currents along the ocean to the south of the 

 Cape of Good Hope, (for it was collected in that meridian in the 51st degree, floating in the open ocean,) it does 

 not appear to inhabit or be cast upon the southern extremity of Africa ; and in the Indian Ocean, again, its range is 

 not likely to be north of the Islets of Prince Edward's, the Crozet group and Kerguelen's Land. On the other hand, 

 the south latitude it attains is probably regulated by the position of the Pack Ice, to within a few miles of which 

 it was traced by the Antarctic Expedition, on one occasion, south of New Zealand to the 65th degree, which is 

 probably its "ultima Thule " in any longitude; for it was there the last trace of vegetation. It grows invariably 

 accompanied by the Maerocystis pyrifera. 



Bory de St. Vincent states, on the excellent authority of D'Urville, that the poorer classes of West Chili use 

 this plant for food, and that when made into soup it is very palateable, being sweet and mucilaginous. In Kerguelen's 

 Land its enormous and weighty fronds, sometimes ten feet long, and almost too heavy for a man to lift, form the 

 only shelter for the shells and soft animals, which there find a refuge from the flocks of aquatic birds that cover the 

 shores and follow the receding tide. 



