564 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



the digesters and for domestic purposes. The factory at Lusi- 

 tania at the king-penguin rookery is not now used ; the great 

 heap of refuse testifies to the great number of birds destroyed. 

 No impression, however, seems to have been made on the 

 numbers occupying the beach, as every available place seemed 

 full of birds. 



The area of the island is probably about the same as that 

 of Otago Peninsula, and it has been already well described 

 by Professor Scott before this Institute after his visit in 1880. 

 The rough-sketch outline annexed (Plate L.) will give some idea 

 of the relative positions of the places afterwards mentioned. 

 The hut in which we lived at Lusitania stood on the crown of 

 the shingle-beach. Immediately behind it was a small creek 

 coming down from the hills at the back, over the sloping 

 terrace thickly covered with a huge tussock grass. This grass 

 (Poa foliosa) forms a huge stool, around which is usually a 

 muddy pool more or less deep, into every one of which 

 you plunge with unerring certainty when trying to cross the 

 belt of tussock swamp, the only way to avoid this un- 

 pleasantness being to jump from the top of one tussock to 

 another. Once beyond the belt of swamp you ascend the 

 steep slopes of the hills, and here you struggle and wrestle 

 with the huge leaves of the Macquarie Island cabbage (Stilbo- 

 carpa polaris), a plant resembling very fine rhubarb. The 

 tussocks and the Stilbocarpa become smaller as you ascend, 

 and at about 300ft. you gain a plateau so swept by the 

 antarctic gales that vegetation is reduced to compact closely- 

 growing mosses, small Uncinias, and the conspicuous cush- 

 ion-like masses of Azorella selago. In the hollows of the 

 uplands are countless little tarns or lakes, some of con- 

 siderable extent. Bound the tops of the hills the wind has 

 cut out wonderful terraces from a few inches to a foot or two 

 in height, with completely bare rock much disintegrated by 

 the weather on the top. In some of the more sheltered places 

 or gullies stunted plants of Stilbocarpa and Pleurophyllum 

 cover the ground. The Pleurophyllum was, unfortunately, 

 long past flower, and so I did not get any specimens of tins 

 beautiful aster-like flower, with its purple ray-florets and 

 yellow centre. The majority of the plants on the island are 

 littoral, and are to be found on the swampy ground near the 

 beach. It is interesting to see how the introduced Poa annua 

 has taken possession of the highly-manured soil on the crown 

 of the beach, and radiates from the settlements, together with 

 some other introduced weeds. From the ship it appeared as 

 if there were some good-sized bushes or shrubs growing on 

 the lower levels, but on landing these were found to be only 

 huge detached rocks overgrown with mosses and large tus- 

 socks of Poa foliosa. On the whole of the island there is not 



