42 POPULAR GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



judge by dried specimens, the Honeysuckles are very much 

 like ours, except that the flowers are considerably smaller. 

 Tall Umbe&fera of some thirteen feet high have a re- 

 markable influence on the character of the landscape in 

 some of the level valleys on the western side of the penin- 

 sula, particularly in autumn, from the dark red colour of 

 the hollow stalks, and the very bright whitish-yellow of the 

 root-leaves. Gigantic nettles too, nearly ten feet in height, 

 grow together in great numbers in the western region, in 

 many respects resembling our Urlica urens, though without 

 its stinging properties. (Plate IV.) 



The flora of the corresponding zone in the Southern 

 Hemisphere will detain us but a short time (if flora that 

 may be called, whose only claim to the title depends on one 

 solitary Grass and a few Mosses and Lichens). This one 

 Grass, which grows in the South Shetland Islands, seems 

 to be the nearest approach to anything like a flower in the 

 Sub-Antarctic Zone. When we remember that these islands 

 lie between 61 and 64 south latitude, and compare the 

 low state of vegetation which they show, with all the pretty 

 little flowers we met with even in the Polar regions, the 

 difference appears very unaccountable. 



Yet lower down in the scale of vegetation is Cockburn 



