I834-] ZOOLOGY. 171 



fungus belongs to a new and curious genus ; * I found a second 

 species on another species of beech in Chile ; and Dr. Hooker informs 

 me, that just lately a third species has been discovered on a third 

 species of beech in Van Diemen's Land. How singular is this rela- 

 tionship between parasitical fungi and the trees on which they grow, 

 in distant parts of the world! In Tierra 

 del Fuego the fungus in its tough and mature 

 state is collected in large quantities by the 

 women and children, and is eaten uncooked. 

 It has a mucilaginous, slightly sweet taste, 

 with a faint smell like that of a mushroom. 

 With the exception of a few berries, chiefly 

 of a dwarf arbutus, the natives eat no vege- 

 table food beside this fungus. In New Zea- 

 land, before the introduction of the potato, 

 the roots of the fern were largely consumed ; 

 at the present time, I believe, Tierra del 

 Fuego is the only country in the world where 

 a cryptogamic plant affords a staple article of food. 



The zoology of Tierra del Fuego, as might have been expected trom 

 the nature of its climate and vegetation, is very poor. Of mammalia, 

 besides whales and seals, there is one bat, a kind of mouse (Reithrodon 

 chinchilloides), two true mice, a ctenomys allied to or identical with the 

 tucutuco, two foxes (Canis Magellanicus and C. Azarae), a sea-otter, the 

 guanaco, and a deer. Most of these animals inhabit only the drier 

 eastern parts of the country ; and the deer has never been seen south of 

 the Strait of Magellan. Observing the general correspondence of the 

 cliffs of soft sandstone, mud, and shingle, on the opposite sides of the 

 Strait, and on some intervening islands, one is strongly tempted to 

 believe that the land was once joined, and thus allowed animals so 

 delicate and helpless as the tucutuco and Reithrodon to pass over. 

 The correspondence of the cliffs is far from proving any junction ; 

 because such cliffs generally are formed by the intersection of sloping 

 deposits, which, before the elevation of the land, had been accumulated 

 near the then existing shores. It is, however, a remarkable coincidence, 

 that in the two large islands cut off by the Beagle Channel from the 

 rest of Tierra del Fuego, one has cliffs composed of matter that may 

 be called stratified alluvium, which front similar ones on the opposite 

 side of the channel, while the other is exclusively bordered by old 

 crystalline rocks : in the former, called Navarin Island, both foxes and 

 guanacos occur; but in the latter, Hoste Island, although similar 

 in every respect, and only separated by a channel a little more than 

 half a mile wide, I have the word of Jemmy Button for saying, that 

 neither of these animals are found. 



The gloomy woods are inhabited by few birds ; occasionally the 



* Described from my specimens, and notes by the Rev. J. M. Berkeley, in 

 the Linnean Transactions (vol. xix., p. 37), under the name of Cyttaria 

 Darwinii : the Chilian species is the C. Berteroii. This genus is allied tA 

 Bulgaria. 



