102 TRANSACTIONS AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE  [Szss. uxrx. 
“Scotia” returned to the islands to winter, and spent eight 
months at Laurie Island. The group consists of two large 
islands—Coronation and Laurie Island, and many smaller 
ones. Coronation Island, or mainland, is the westerly, and 
Laurie Island the easterly. It was on the latter island, in the 
south of which Scotia Bay is, that the greater part of the 
botanical collections were made. These two islands are sepa- 
rated from one another by two small islands and Washington 
and Leethwaite Straits. Of the outlying islands the most 
important is Saddle Island, lying about eight miles north of 
Laurie Island. Ailsa Craig, mentioned several times in this 
paper, is a large rocky crag standing at the mouth of Scotia 
Bay. Deep bays run into the land from north and south, 
separated by narrow rocky peninsulas or steep and lofty 
mountain-ranges. All the valleys are choked with glaciers, 
despite the relatively small gathering-ground on the heights 
above, and what little exposed rock is visible is precipitous in 
the extreme. It is only here and there that a few acres of 
more or less level ground are to be found on the lower slopes 
or at sea-level. Although in a comparatively low southern 
latitude, the South Orkneys are ice-bound for some six to eight 
months of the year. In mid-winter practically everything,even 
to the faces of precipitous cliffs, is covered with snow, and not 
before October or November does much of the snow disappear. 
In these months many patches of moss-covered ground came to 
light, and in some of them, by successive years’ growth, six to 
ten inches of soil have been formed. Except this vegetable 
mould, there is little soil anywhere. The rocks—various 
kinds of graywacke—are mostly covered with lichens, par- 
ticularly Usnea, and Weddell,! to whom we are indebted for 
the first account of the islands, mentions that at Cape Dundas 
where he landed “ there was a patch of short ‘grass.’” During 
the winter and spring that the Scottish Antarctic Expe- 
dition spent at the South Orkneys, I made a very careful 
search for this grass both at Cape Dundas and elsewhere, but 
failed to find any signs of it. It is possible that this grass 
may have been casually introduced, and succumbed after a 
few seasons to the severity of the climate, or been unable to 
grow on account of the numbers of penguins that frequent 
1 James Weddell, “A Voyage toward the South Pole in the years 
1822-24,” p. 24. 
