1G6 Dr. Hooker's Flora Antarctica. ' 



wonder. The very fact of Kerguelen's Land being possessed of 

 such a singularly luxuriant botanical feature, confers on that 

 small island an importance far beyond what its volcanic origin 

 or its dimensions would seem to claim ; whilst the certainty that 

 so conspicuous a plant can never have been overlooked in any 

 larger continent, but that it was created in all probability near 

 where it now grows, leads the mind back to the epoch far ante- 

 rior to the present, when the vegetation of the Island of Desola- 

 tion may have presented a fertility of which this is perhaps the 

 only remaining trace. Many tons of coal and vast stores of now 

 silicified wood, (which I have mentioned in the introduction to 

 this Part,) are locked up in or buried under those successive geo- 

 logical formations which have many times destroyed the forests 

 of this island, and as often themselves supported a luxuriant veg- 

 etation. The fires that desolated Kerguelen's Land are long ago 

 extinct, nor does the island show any signs of the recent exertion 

 of those powers, that have at one time raised parts of it from the 

 beds of the ocean with those submarine Algae which once car- 

 peted its shores but which now are some hundred feet above the 

 present level of the sea. The Pritiglea, in short, seems to have 

 led an uninterrupted and tranquil life for many ages ; but however 

 loth we may be to concede to any one vegetable production an 

 antiquity greater than another, or to this island a position to other 

 lands wholly different from what it now presents, the most casual 

 inspection of the ground where the plant now grows, will force 

 one of the two following conclusions upon the mind ; either that 

 it was created after the extinction of the now buried and forever 

 lost vegetation, over whose remains it abounds, or that it spread 

 over the island from another and a neighboring region where it 

 was undisturbed during the devastation of this, but of whose ex- 

 istence no indication remains. 



u The P ring lea is exceedingly abundant over all parts of the 

 island, ascending the hills up to 1400 feet, but only attaining its 

 usual large size close to the sea, where it is invariably the first 

 plant to greet the voyager like the Cochlearia or scurvy grass 

 upon the northern coasts. Its long rhizomata, often three or four 

 feet long, lie along the ground ; they are sometimes two inches 

 in diameter, full of spongy and fibrous substances intermixed, of 

 a half woody texture, and with the flavor of horse-radish, and 

 bear at the extremity large heads of leaves, sometimes eighteen 

 inches across, so like those of the common cabbage that, if grow- 

 ing in a garden with their namesakes in England, they would 

 not excite any particular attention ; the outer leaves are coarse, 

 loosely placed and spreading, the inner form a dense white heart, 

 that tastes like mustard and cress, but is much coarser. The 

 whole abounds with essential oil of a pale yellow color, highly 

 pungent, and confined in vessels that run parallel with the veins 



