1834.] ZOOLOGY. 225 



surface deeply pitted or honey-combed, as represented in tho 

 accompanying wood-cut. This fungus belongs to a new and 

 curious genus ; * I found a second 

 species on another species of beech in 

 Chile ; and Dr. Hooker informs me, that 

 just lately a third species has been dis- 

 covered on a third species of beech 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 

 cat no vegetable food besides 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 (Ecithrodon chinchilloides), two true mice, a ctenomys 

 allied to or identical with the tucutuco, two foxes (Cam's Magel- 

 lanicus and C. AzaraV), 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 corre- 

 spondence of the cliffs is far from proving any junction ; because 

 such cliffs generally are formed by the intersection of sloping 



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

 in the Linnean Transactions (vol. xix. p. 37), under the name of Cyttaria 

 Darwiuii ; the Chilian species is the C. Berteroii. This genus is allied to 

 Bulgaria. 



