



Dr. Hooker's Flora Antarctica. 165 



found prostrate trunks of fossil trees of no mean girth, and the 

 incinerated remains of recent ones, which had been swallowed 

 up simultaneously with the fossil; and these occur in strata of 

 various ages, so that it seems impossible to reckon the period of 

 time that must have elapsed between the origin, growth, and de- 

 struction of the successive forests now buried in one bill. A sec- 

 tion of such a hill would display coal beds and shale resting upon 

 a blue basalt, at the level of the sea, covered again with whin- 

 stone, whereon are deposited successive layers of volcanic sand, 

 baked clay-stones, porphyries, and long lines of basaltic cliffs, 

 formed of perpendicular prisms, regularly sloped like those of 

 Staffa or the Giants Causeway, and along which the traveller may 

 walk even for a mile without ascending or descending fifty feet. 

 To calculate the time required for the original formation fol- 

 lowing silicification of one such forest, and to multiply that by 

 the number of different superincumbent strata, containing remains 

 similar to those displayed at the north end of Kergueletrs Land, 



would give a startling number of years, during which periods the 



island must have deserved a better name than that of 'Desola- 

 tion. 5 And if to this be added the time necessary for the deposit 

 of the arenaceous beds containing the impressions of Fact, of 

 the clays afterwards hardened by fire, and of the prismatic cliffs, 

 which, with the arenaceous, indicate that the land was alternately 

 submerged and exposed as often as those successive formations 

 occur, such a sum would bespeak an antiquity for the flora of thi 

 isolated speck on the surface of our globe far beyond our powers 

 of calculation." 



This island, the remotest of any from a continent, in the most 

 inhospitable climate, now yields only eighteen flowering plants; 

 but one of these is a very important one, namely the Kergmkn's 

 Land Cabbage, which the readers of Capt. Cook's voyage will 

 not fail to remember. It appears that Mr. Anderson, the surgeon 

 and naturalist of Cook's first voyage, and who successfully used 

 this plant to check the scurvy which was making such ravages 

 among the crew, on his return, drew up an account of the remark- 

 able plants he collected, which is still preserved in the Banksian 

 Library; and that to this he applied the name of Pringiea, in 

 honor of Sir John Pringle who wrote a work on the scurvy. In 

 now completing and giving to the world the botanical account 

 °f this plant, Dr. Hooker has m« t properly adopted this name, 

 adding at Mr. Brown's suggestion, the specific appellation of an- 

 focorbuHcm* lie thus discourses upon the plant.- 



u m 



Fhe contemplation of a vegetable very milike any other in 

 botanical affinity and in general appearance, so eminently fitted 

 for the food of man, and yet inhabiting one of the most desolated 

 ^nd inhospitable spots on the surface oC the globe, must equally 



hll the mind of the scientific enquirer and common observer with 



