98 THE PLANT WORLD. 



lajas over Behring Strait and down the Rocky Monntains to 

 Southern Chili^ and reappearing in Australia. Hence plants 

 pass over by help of winds, or marine currents, or birds, from 

 Patagonia, to Staaten Islands, the Falklands, Kerguelen, and 

 beyond Australia to the islands of the Antarctic. 



My attempt to provide a text-book of the Patagonian flora 

 was the outcome of some small collections of plants made by the 

 late J. B. Hatcher and by O. A. Peterson, as incidental to their 

 geological explorations. The plants did not contain much that 

 had not been previously found and described by others, and as 

 there is no recent general book about them, I was compelled to 

 make a list of the species, and to make notes of their diagnostic 

 marks for my own use. This soon grew far l>e3'ond my antici- 

 pations, a great work in size, l>ut only very elementary in aim.* 



I should also explain that most of the work was done away 

 from my base, in the Gray Herbarium, at Harvard University, 

 at the Tv^ew York Botanical Garden, and at the Academy of 

 Sciences in Philadephia, and it was consequently impossible to 

 do justice to the subject. I was buoyed up, however, by the 

 hope that it would at least afterwards prove helpful to others, 

 especially when supplemented and amended by specialists. In 

 this direction I am already indebted to Dr. Per Dusen of Stock- 

 holm, who has had large opportunities of exploring the Western 

 and Southern parts of Patagonia, and besides contributing to the 

 volume on the general botany, and specially on the Bryophytes, 

 has examined many of the specimens, and criticized my identifi- 

 cations. Dr. Teodore Stuckert of Cordoba, Argentina, has also 

 revised my work on the terminology, and sent me a list of the 

 more useful synonyms. 



Of the interesting surprises which occurred tlnring my 

 work, the greatest was as to the large number of species of flow- 

 ering plants within the Patagonian region. T was so ignorant 

 at the outset as to expect about 800 ; there turned out to be !2,100. 

 and now Dr. Stuckert sends me the names of about 100 addi- 



*Peports cf the Princeton University Expeditions to Patagonia, 

 1896-1899. Botany, by George Macloslde. Princeton, N. J., 1905. 



