

224 A NATUKALIST ON THE "CHALLENGER." 



Heard Island is in a corresponding latitude to Lincoln. No 

 doubt, when England was in its last glacial epoch, Heard Island 

 enjoyed a much milder climate, and it was possibly then that the 

 lar^e trees grew, the trunks of which are now fossil in Kerguelen's 

 Land, and that the ancestors of Lyallia and Pringlea flourished. 



A stretch of land on the north-west side of the plain was 

 covered pretty thickly with green, which was on closer view 

 seen to be composed of patches of Azorella,* growing on the 

 summits of mud or sand hummocks, which were separated from 

 one another by ditches or cavities, of usually bare brown mud. 



Some of these Azorella patches were of considerable extent, 

 and the plant was evidently flourishing and in full fruit. On 

 some hummocks grew tufts of the grass Poa Cookii, in full 

 flower and with the anthers fully developed ; and on the sheltered 

 banks of the hummocks the Kerguelen cabbage (Pringlea anti- 

 scorbutica), grew in considerable quantity, but dwarfed in com- 

 parison with Kerguelen specimens, both in foliage and in the 

 length of the fruiting stems. Most of it was in fruit, but some 

 still in flower, as at Kerguelen's Land. 



Around pools of water in the hollows grew a variety of 

 a British plant, Callitriche Verna (sub sp. obtusangidata) , in 

 quantity, and it occurred also in abundance submerged; in 

 company with a Conferva. In the same sheltered spots grew 

 Colobanthus Kerguehnsis, in greater abundance even than at 

 Kerguelen's Land. 



These five flowering plants,! all occurring also in Kerguelen's 

 Land, were the only ones found in the island, and it is im- 

 probable that any others grow there. Heard Island has thus a 

 miserably poor flora, even for the higher latitudes of the 

 southern hemisphere. The Falkland Islands, in lat. 51° to 52° 

 S., have 119 phanerogamic plants, and Hermit Island, far to the 

 south of Heard Island, in lat. 56° S., has 84 phanerogams, and 

 amongst them trees of which this island is the southern limit. 



An Antarctic flora can in reality hardly be said to exist, since 

 there are absolutely no phanerogamic plants within the Ant- 

 arctic circle, and on Possession Island, lying oft' the coast of 



* See p. 166. 



t Prof. Oliver, P.R.S., "Journal of Linn. Soc.," Vol. XIV, p. 381). 



