I 



DESIGN OF THE FLOKA ANTAECTICA 83 



it 



Prince Edward's, the Crozets, Royal Companies Islands, 

 Emerald Island, and whether Webster's Deception Island 

 or Cook's South Georgian plants are in the Museum. Tristan 

 D'Acunha and St. Paul's and Amsterdam, though in such 

 low latitudes, have an Antarctic Botany, but I have seen 

 none of them. 



However, he set to work on his own plants and his books 

 during the next six months with this end in view. One more 

 botanical letter to his father may be quoted to illustrate his 

 work on the Cryptogams, with its tendency to simplify classifica- 

 tion and its relation to his Herbarium work. After the third 

 visit to the ice he writes on the way from the Antarctic Circle 

 to the Cape : 



March 7, 1843. 



During the past voyage I have re-examined all my An- 

 tarctic Mosses. . . . The Andraeae puzzled me exceedingly 

 and occupied me very many days, for I had to examine 

 many hundred specimens. I do hope they are scrupulously 

 accurate, for I always compared the present examination 

 with what I made on the spot, and consider most of the 

 mosses to have had three examinations ; where there is so 

 much novelty I may have made varieties into species, but 

 in a field so new some allowance must be made. . . . 



There are hardly any new genera, nor have I any wish 

 to get a notoriety by having * HooK^ tagged on to the end 

 of a string of barbarous names. I should be far more proud 

 of placing a well-known plant in its true position and relation 

 to others than naming another and leaving others to squeeze 

 it in between what he may think its congeners. 



All other mosses are divisible into Aero and Pleuro- 

 cavpi ; there are five groups I consider quite natural, and 

 the three first of them abnormal ; these are what McLeay's ^ 

 quinary system acknowledges, but you must not think that 

 I am led away by any system, for I formed this system 

 before I saw McLeay's and before I understood his views. 

 When we met we never broached the subject of his system, 

 for I felt myself too ignorant of the subject ; I cannot, 



^ William Macleay, of Sydney, son of the Colonial Secretary, was a naturalist 

 of some note, inventor of a now forgotten system of classification which posited 

 the number 5 as the basis for the struxsture and grouping of all living things. 



