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ble wooden and turf huts. There are lots of wild cattle, which the 

 settlers chiefly live on : they are taken by some Buenos Ayreans who 

 live there, with the lasso. There are also lots of wild horses, one of 

 which I shot in one of my rambles, and dined off him in the follow- 

 ing manner. A large round mass of flesh, the skin adhering, is cut off 

 and roasted, hide downwards, on the fire : this is termed * carne con 

 cuero,' or ' flesh with the skin,' and to a ravenously hungry naturalist, 

 a piece of colt's flesh treated in this manner, albeit roasted two mi- 

 nutes after the animal was gallopping over the hills, and eaten without 

 bread or salt, is no contemptible grub. You may laugh at my Tartar 

 banquet, but had I not come across the unfortunate ' cheval' which 

 furnished our meat, I had serious thoughts of supping on a turkey- 

 buzzard, which might have been rather tough and somewhat carrion- 

 tasted. Birds swarm everywhere at the Falklands, wild geese espe- 

 cially, and from being so little molested are so tame that they may 

 be knocked down with the oar ; a gun, in fact, is almost superfluous. 

 These birds are at this season found only along the sea-shore. Be- 

 sides these there are two or three vultures, two penguins, the Chionis, 

 and numerous other sea and shore birds. As it was the end of winter 

 scarcely a single plant was in flower, and the heath was covered with 

 tufts of withered grasses and Cyperacege. I got some very good 

 Cryptogamia, especially lichens, five Stictse and Usneas, and a good 

 many Algae, one species, a large Irida3a, scarcely differs from I. edu- 

 lis, unless in size : it is sometimes four or five feet long. The shore 

 is everywhere belted by an enormous growth of Macrocystis pyrife- 

 ra, which extends to the depth of eight or ten fathoms, and renders 

 landing in a boat frequently very difficult, or almost impossible. It 

 grows in an immense matted mass, the stems being very slender, and 

 each lanceolate, toothed leaf having at the base a large, oblong vesi- 

 cle. From its excessively branched and entangled growth it is al- 

 most impossible to ascertain the length of any one plant, but I have 

 unravelled thirty-three feet without any appearance of end, and I 

 doubt not it attains 100 feet, or even much more. Another giant 

 Alga is also abundant, the Lessonia fuscescens, before whose dimen- 

 sions our Laminaria bulbosa and digitata sink into insignificance; the 

 enormous stems seem more like the trunks of trees as they lie on the 

 sea-beach than anything else. The upper part of the stem is divided 

 into an immense number of dichotomous branches, each of which is 

 terminated by a lanceolate frond. 



" I got specimens and live plants of the magnificent tussack-grass 



