THE FUNGUS. 303 



or tbree species of trees grow, to the exclusion of 

 all others. Above the forest land there are many 

 dwarf alpine plants, which all spring from the mass 

 of peat, and help to compose it : these plants are 

 very remarkable, from their close alliance with the 

 species growing on the mountains of Europe, though 

 so many thousand miles distant. The central part 

 of Tierra del Fuego, where the clay-slate forma- 

 tion occurs, is most favourable to the gi'owth of 

 trees ; on the outer coast the poorer granitic soil, 

 and a situation more exposed to the violent winds, 

 do not allow of their attaining any great size. 

 Near Port Famine I have seen more large trees 

 than anywhere else : I measured a Winter's Bark 

 which was four feet six inches in girth, and sever- 

 al of the beech were as much as thirteen feet. Cap- 

 tain King also mentions a beech which was seven 

 feet in diameter seventeen feet above the roots. 



There is one vegetable production deserving no- 

 tice fi-om its importance as an article of food to the 

 Fuegians. It is a globular bright-yellow fungus, 

 which gi'ows in vast num- 

 bers on the beech -trees. 

 When young, it is elastic 

 and turgid, with a smooth 

 surface ; but when mature, 

 it shrinks, becomes tough- 

 er, and has its entire sur- 

 face deeply pitted or honey- 

 combed, as represented in 

 the accompanying woodcut. 

 This fungus belongs to a new and curious genus ;* 



cold one. The change in the colour being here retarded in the 

 more elevated, and therefore colder sitnations, must be owing to 

 the same general law of vegetation. The trees of Tierra del Fu- 

 ego during no part of the year entirely shed their leaves. 



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

 Berkeley, in the Linnean Transactions (vol. xix., p. 37), undex the 



