1834.] LARGE TREES. 237 



of Tierra del Fuego ; irregular chains of hills, mottled 

 with patches of snow, deep yellowish-green valleys, and 

 arms of the sea intersecting the land in many directions. 

 The strong wind was piercingly cold, and the atmosphere 

 rather hazy, so that we did not stay long on the top of the 

 mountain. Our descent was not quite so laborious as our 

 ascent ; for the weight of the body forced a passage, and all 

 the slips and falls were in the right direction. 



I have already mentioned the sombre and dull character 

 of the evergreen forests,* in which two or three 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 formation occurs, is most 

 favourable to the growth 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 any- 

 where else : 1 measured a Winter's Bark which was four 

 feet six inches in girth, and several of the beech were as 

 much as thirteen feet. Captain King also mentions a beech 

 which was seven feet in diameter seventeen feet above 

 the roots. 



There is one vegetable production deserving notice from 

 Its importance as an article of food to the Fuegians. It 

 is a globular, bright-yellow fungus, which grows in vast 

 numbers on the beech-trees. When young it is elastic and 

 turgid, with a smooth surface ; but when mature It shrinks, 

 becomes tougher, and has its entire surface deeply pitted or 

 honeycombed. This fungus belongs to a new and curious 

 genus ; t I found a second species on another species of 



• Captain Fitz Roy informs me that in April (our October), the leaves ot 

 those trees which grow near the base of the mountains change colour, but not 

 those on the more elevated parts. I remember having read some observations, 

 showing that in England the leaves fall earlier in a warm and fine autumn, 

 than in a late and cold one. The change in the colour being here retarded in 

 the more elevated, and therefore colder situations, must be owing to the same 

 general law of vegetation. The trees of Tierra del Fuego during no part of the 

 vcar entirely shed ihcir leaves. 



t DcBcribc'd from niy specimens, and notes by the Rev. J. M, Berkeley, in the 

 hinncan Transactions " (vol. xix., j>. 37), under the name of Cvttariu iJarwiuii « 

 'if C'fiilian sv)ri ics is thr ( .' Hrrteroii. This geous tfl allied to buli^aria. 



