76 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE 



two miles of the harbour, thus proving that Mr. Anderson ^ 

 • was either not ingenious or not ingenuous. 



During the two months of his stay here, while the portable 

 observatory was set up for a long series of magnetic observa- 

 tions, not only did he enlarge the list of local species from 

 18 to 150, especially among the Cryptogams, but, by analysis 

 of his material here and elsewhere, he was able to show 

 the relative increase among the lower forms of Antarctic 

 vegetation,^ the peculiarities of plant life in the lonely 

 Oceanic islands ; the relation of the island floras to each 

 other and to those of the Southern Continents and of the 

 Arctic regions. 



His Journal records a curious discovery in the two small 

 lakes between Christmas Harbour and Northwest Bay. 



In these lakes there occurs a most remarkable plant, 

 which resembles Sahularia aquatica, forming green patches 

 a foot or two below the surface of the water on a loose muddy 

 bottom ; here it flowers, the close imbrication of the calicine 

 segments and those of the Corolla protecting the stamens 

 from the influence of the water. Each germen contains 

 a small bubble of air, generated, of course, within the 

 ' ovary. Winter seems to be its flowering season, and I 

 found it in flower after a long search, under a coating 

 of 2 inches of ice ; as far as I have hitherto examined 

 it seems to differ from the characters of any Natural 

 Order. 



The ' Cabbage ' (Pringlea antiscorhutica), as has been said, 

 comes in for a good deal of notice, along with other useful 

 plants on the island. He writes in his Journal : 



Even in this remote corner of the globe, and scanty 

 though the vegetation be, it has more than an ordinary 

 interest, from the utiHty of two of its products. The 



1 William Anderson, at first surgeon's mate, afterwards naturalist, on the 

 Resolution under Captain Cook. In the account of Cook's voyages, he is 

 referred to as ' the ingenious Mr. Anderson.' He wrote a full account of 

 the Kerguelen Cabbage aforesaid {Pringlea antiscorhutica). 



* Dicotyledons to Monocotyledons as 1:2; grasses as 1 : 2*6 of the 

 whole. 



