194 HEARD ISLAND. 



Andes,* so great is the chilling influence of the vast southern 

 sea. 



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 large trees grew, the trunks of which are now fossil in 

 Kerguelen's Land, and that the ancestors oi 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,t growing on the 

 summits of mud or sand hummocks, which were separated from 

 one another by ditches or cavities, usually of 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 aiitiscorbutica) grew in considerable quantity, but 

 dwarfed in comparison 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. obtusangulafa), in 

 quantity, and it occurred also in abundance submerged ; in 

 company with a Conferva. In the same sheltered spots grew 

 Colobauthiis kerguekfisis, 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 impro- 

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

 miseraljly 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 a.re absolutely no phanerogamic plants within the Ant- 

 arctic^circle," and on Cockburn Island, lying off the coast of 

 Palmir Land, in about lat. 64° S., Sir Joseph Hooker found § 



* Grisebach, " Die Vegetation der Erdc." Leipzig, 1872. 2. Bd. s. 467. 

 Ibique citata. 



t See p. 143. 



:j: Prof. Oliver, .F.R.S., "Journal of Linn. Soc," Vol. XIV., p. 3S9. 



§ "Flora A\itarctica," p. 216. Ross, "Antarctic Voyage.' London, 

 1847, Vol. II., p. 335. 



