HEARD ISLAND. 225 



Victoria Land, in abont lat. 72° S., within the Circle, Sir Joseph 

 Hooker found* only 18 cryptogams, mosses, lichens, and algae, 

 no trace of phanerogams. Yet in Saltdalen, in Norway, north 

 of the Arctic Circle, there are fine timber forests and thriving 

 farms, yielding abundant crops of hay and barley. Melville 

 Island, in lat. 74° 75' K, 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle, 

 has a vegetation of 67 flowering plants. 



Sir J. D. Hooker, in his latest memoir on the botany of 

 Kerguelen's Land, says : " The three small archipelagos of 

 Kerguelen Island (including the Heard Islands), Marion and 

 Prince Edward's Islands, and the Crozets, are individually and 

 collectively the most barren tracts on the globe, whether in 

 their own latitude or in a higher one, except such as lie within 

 the Antarctic Circle itself ; for no land, even within the North 

 Polar area, presents so impoverished a vegetation."! 



About the sides of the hummocks already described grew 

 scantily four species of mosses, one of which proved to be new 

 and peculiar to the island. 



The majority of the land surface of Heard Island, free from 

 ice, besides the green tract described, is entirely devoid of 

 vegetation. Only on the talus slopes of the hills on their shel- 

 tered sides, are seen scattered in a very few places scanty 

 patches of green. These composed lower down mainly of 

 Azorella stretch up the slopes, and terminate at an elevation 

 of a few hundred feet in bright yellow patches, consisting 

 entirely of mosses, just as at Marion Island, on the higher 

 slopes. I searched in vain for lichens of any kind. 



There seems to be a very great difference with regard to the 

 vertical range of plants in these southern islands, and in the 

 Arctic regions. In Marion Island, I estimated the absolute 

 limit of vegetation at an altitude of about 2,000 feet ; in Ker- 

 guelen's Land, the limit seems to lie at about 1,500 feet or 

 lower ; plants of any kind are there already scarce at 1,000 feet 

 above sea level. In Heard Island vegetation seems to cease at 

 300 or 400 feet altitude. Yet in East Greenland, the same 



* " Flora Antarctica," p. 216. 



t " Observations on the Botany of Kerguelen Island by Sir J. D. 

 Hooker, P.R.S.," &c. Transit of Venus Expedition, Botany, pp. 2, 3. 



Q 



