prompted the French government in 

 1893 to re-establish possession of the 

 islands in the name of France. Com- 

 mercial exploitation of Kerguelen was 

 assigned to a private company, first for 

 the extraction of whale oil and later for 

 sheep raising. The sheep farm was aban- 

 doned during World War I, and the lim- 

 ited supply of whales ended the activity 

 of the whale-processing plant in 1927. 

 Kerguelen was then practically forgot- 

 ten until World War II, when German 

 planes were based there, drawing atten- 

 tion to the strategic value of the islands. 

 In 1950 the French founded the first set- 

 tlement on the archipelago. 



Captain Cook explored Kerguelen in 

 1776. His surgeon, Mr. Anderson, a 

 student of natural history, recorded these 

 observations in December of that year: 



"Perhaps no place, hitherto discovered in 

 either hemisphere, under the same parallel 

 of latitude, affords so scanty a field for the 

 naturalist as this barren spot. The verdure, 

 which appears when at a little distance from 

 the shore, would flatter one with the expec- 

 tation of meeting with some herbage; but in 

 this we were much deceived. For on landing, 

 we saw that this lively colour was occasioned 

 only by one small plant [Azorelta selago], not 

 much unlike some sorts of saxifrage. . . There 

 is another plant, plentifully enough scattered 

 about the boggy declivities, which grows to 

 near the height of two feet, and not much 

 unlike a small cabbage. . . We ate [this 

 plant] frequently raw ..." 



From the early 1800s until about 1870, 

 sealers and whalers at Kerguelen carried 

 on a hazardous, arduous, but presum- 

 ably lucrative business boiling down pen- 

 guins and elephant seals for their blub- 

 ber, and hunting fur seals on the beaches 

 and southern right-whales in the seas 

 adjacent to the archipelago. The peak 

 period of this depredation was about 

 1847, when as many as three hundred 

 vessels were annually employed around 

 those shores. The diminution of the fur 

 seal, the elephant seal, and the right- 

 whale to unprofitable numbers speedily 

 reduced the carnage after 1850. 



Kerguelen has been visited by a num- 

 ber of scientific expeditions and is, as a 

 result, far from being scientifically un- 

 known. Much of the detailed work 

 there, however, has been done in the 

 coastal regions. The interior of the 

 main island and many of the smaller 

 islands are quite unexplored because of 

 difficulties of access presented by fiords, 



lakes, bogs, and mud-holes. 



Among the fauna of Kerguelen the in- 

 sects are noteworthy because of the pre- 

 ponderance of forms that are wingless or 

 possess only rudimentary wings and so 

 cannot fly. The archipelago's only wild 

 land mammals are introduced rabbits, 

 mice, rats, sheep, and dogs. Of "land 

 birds" Kerguelen has only two, a small 

 duck and a sheathbill, but it is, in con- 

 trast, a rendezvous to legions of sea birds, 

 including penguins, albatrosses, petrels, 

 gulls, terns, cormorants, and skuas. The 

 king penguin is now scarce although 

 these birds, along with rockhopper and 

 gentoo penguins, are said to have ex- 

 isted in vast numbers there before toll 

 was taken of them by exploiters of the 

 19th century. The reports of early navi- 

 gators depicting the human-like man- 

 nerisms of Kerguelen's penguins gave 

 the islands the name of the "Land of 

 Little Men" and provided inspiration to 

 Anatole France for his satirical novel, 

 Penguin Island. No fresh-water fishes are 

 known from Kerguelen even though 

 lakes are common. The islands have 

 long been a favored haunt of the ele- 

 phant seal. During the first half of the 

 19th century these animals were almost 

 exterminated there by sealers. After 

 that, they seem to have increased until, 

 at the beginning of the 20th century, 

 they were again brought close to deci- 

 mation. At present, they are on the 

 increase once more. The fur seal, ap- 

 parently never abundant on the archi- 

 pelago, had become very rare by the end 

 of the last century, but it still is found 

 there, as is the leopard seal. In 1924, 

 certain portions of Kerguelen and some 

 of the other French subantarctic islands 

 in the Indian Ocean were set aside by 

 the French government as a national 

 park in which the hunting of seals is for- 

 bidden. 



Only thirty-three species of flowering 

 plants, including three introduced weeds, 

 are known from the archipelago. In 

 addition, four ferns, two clubmosses, and 

 numerous lichens, mosses, liverworts, 

 and algae have been found there. No 

 trees or large shrubs are to be seen. 

 Indeed, no plant is taller than the cab- 

 bage, whose flower-stalk grows only as 

 high as two or three feet. The most 

 characteristic and conspicuous flowering 

 plants are Azorella selago, which forms 



dense mounds that from a distance re- 

 semble mossy boulders; Acaena adsendens, 

 which has prostrate stems and dense 

 heads of purplish flowers; and Pringlea 

 antiscorbutica, the cabbage. 



The Kerguelen cabbage grows from 

 creeping, half-woody stems, sometimes 

 five or six feet long and as many inches 

 in diameter. Its large heads of leaves, 

 as much as eighteen inches across, are so 

 like those of the common garden cab- 

 bage that, as Dr. J. D. Hooker remarked 

 in his Flora Antarctica (1847), if they were 

 "growing in a garden with their name- 

 sakes in England they would not excite 

 any particular attention." The outer 

 leaves are loose, but the inner form a 

 compact, white heart. The flowers are 

 borne in dense, long, and narrow clusters 

 that arise from the stem below the head. 

 Some of the flowers have the four petals 

 that are characteristic of other crucifers 

 — members of the mustard family — but 

 most have only one, two, or three petals, 

 or even none. 



In days now past, the cabbage was 

 abundant throughout much of the archi- 

 pelago. Now it is scarce because of de- 

 struction by rabbits that have become 

 common since their introduction by a 

 British expedition in 1874. Fortunately, 

 these edacious rodents have not become 

 established on all the islands. In areas 

 where they are abundant, they have de- 

 stroyed significant amounts of the vege- 

 tation cover, with the result that soil 

 erosion is accelerated. Kerguelen cab- 

 bage grows not only on Desolation Land 

 but also on three other island groups in 

 the same region of the subantarctic In- 

 dian Ocean: Heard, Marion, and Cro- 

 zet. An intractable wilding, the plant 

 has never been cultivated successfully. 

 Dr. Hooker suggested that the cab- 

 bage is wind-pollinated and so is differ- 

 ent from most other members of the 

 mustard family, for which insect-polli- 

 nation is the rule. In support of his 

 suggestion he pointed out the frequent 

 lack of petals — a major function of petals 

 is to attract, by their showiness, polli- 

 nating insects — and the usual absence 

 of nectar-secreting glands in cabbage 

 flowers — such nectaries are characteris- 

 tic of most crucifers. Also suggestive of 

 wind-pollination is the pollen itself, which 

 is said to be different from that of nearly 

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