176 WILD FLOWERS. 



World, as has been said, not a single heath has been 

 met with ; though JEricaceous plants abound, and 

 though, in Brazil, the cuphea covers large tracts of 

 land with its brilliant blossoms, as if in emulation 

 of our heaths. The share which the heather takes 

 in the formation of peat in the Old World is well 

 known, but its absence in the New, by no means 

 interferes with the progress of this vegetable de- 

 posit wherever the climate is such as to favour the 

 very slow process of decay from which it results. 

 Thus, in the Falkland Islands, though our common 

 bog moss (Spagnum) occurs, it is not found in such 

 large quantities as the amount of the peat deposit 

 would appear to indicate ; and heather, as we have 

 seen, is absent; but the deficiency is compensated by 

 the conversion of the grasses, a small myrtle, and the 

 Empetrum rubrum, a species scarcely differing from 

 our crow-berry (E. nigrum), into a peat as perfectly 

 antiseptic in its properties as is that of the eastern 

 hemisphere.f In the newest world of all, in Aus- 

 tralia, a sort of neutral ground is established in the 

 appearance and great prevalence of the Epacridece, 

 a family which includes the two sections of the 

 Epacris and the Styphelia, and is only distinguish- 

 able from the heaths by the structure of its anthers, 

 which are single-celled, and open longitudinally, 

 while those of the heaths are two-celled. 



Although, in North Britain, the heather- spray is 

 more especially the badge of certain individual 

 clans, and though the different species are distinc- 



t See Dr. Hooker in Appendix to Sir J. Eoss's "Antarctic 

 Voyage." 



