33» EDIBLE FUNGUS. [chap, xr? 



beech in Chile ; and Dr. Hooker informs me, that just 

 lately a third species has been discovered on a third species 

 of beeches in Van Diemen's Land. How singular is this 

 relationship 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 vegetable food beside this 

 fungus. In New Zealand, 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 from 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 {Cants Magellanicus and C. AzarcB)y 

 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 accumu- 

 lated 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, 



 



