Dr. Hooker's Flora Antarctica. 163 



subject. In reference to this curious topic I would adduce, as cor- 

 roborative perhaps of his speculations, the general geographical 

 arrangement of these islands, whose botany I am about to describe 

 as that of one country. They stretch from Fuegia on the west 

 to Kerguelen's Land on the east, between the parallels of 45 and 

 46° of south latitude. Throughout this portion of the world the 

 land exhibits a manifest tendency eastward, from the extreme 

 south of the American continent ; for there are no fewer than 

 five detached groups of islands between Fuegia and Kerguelen's 

 Land, but none between the latter island and the longitude of 

 Lord Auckland's group, nor between this last again and the 

 western shores of Fuegia and Patagonia. * * 



" Tierra del Fuego and the neighboring southern extremity of 

 the American continent appear to be the region of whose botan- 

 ical peculiarities all the other Antarctic islands, except those in the 

 vicinity of New Zealand, more or less evidently partake. It 

 presents a Flora characterizing isolated groups of islands, extend- 

 ing for 5000 miles to the eastward of its own position ; some of 

 these detached spots are much closer to the African and Austra- 

 lian continents, whose vegetation they do not assume, than to 

 the American ; and they are all situated in latitudes and under 

 circumstances eminently unfavorable to the migration of species, 

 save that their position relatively to Fuegia is in the same direc- 

 tion as that of the violent and prevailing westerly winds.'!* 



While Fuegia is to a considerable extent forest-clad, especially 

 the western portions, the characteristic trees being the Deciduous 

 Antarctic Beech with the Evergreen Beech, the Falkland Islands, 

 though mainly lying more northward, produce no tree whatever. 



"The botanical and other characters of the Falklands are 

 allied to the Atlantic coast of Patagonia, opposite to the strait 



* "The prevalence of certain winds in favoring the migration of plants must not 

 be overlooked, though too much stress has been laid by some writers on their influ- 

 ence. An element that will carry particles of dust for hundreds of miles through 

 the upper regions of the air, must be a powerful agent in disseminating the sporule* 

 of the lower orders of plants ; so much so indeed, that 1 should unhesitatingly deny 

 the necessity of a double creation, to account for the same species of moss or lichen 

 inhabiting any two snots on the globe, however widely apart. Thai nirrents of air 

 re not efficacious in wafting the seeds of the higher orders is proved by the ah- 



filiation) 



though, when once in- 

 r see that the tide of 

 He islands set in a di- 

 i;itic and not from the 



Azores, Madeira, and the Canaries, though tU. ^ » "^jtod ». the , erly 



*<».1>. , ll( ai„ a I«ge proportion of Eo^pean spa . .1 "' *£■ 1 '; 



»'a v rterl, gales to the' southward of ft - P*° ^fS^SSJ^S ' 

 «*h winds Carried Jl. M. S. Chanticleer from Cape Horn to the i « of Good Hope 

 a ..listanee of 4000 miles, in twenty-**- days, and hav enabled an ocean* fcg 



the Cape Pigeon, „, n.aintein its position close to a slap during the whokoJ that 

 distance ; but still I am not inclinS to attribute the prevalence of the Fuegian flora 



over so vast an area to their influence, when exerted i ainst many other oppOMBg 



agents." 



