

D?\ Hooker's Flora Antarctica. 169 



tear it up to get at the sweet nutty-flavored roots. I have not 

 tried how it would be relished if made into hay, but cattle will 

 eat the thatch off the roof of a house in winter; their preference 

 to Tussock grass being so great that they scent it a considerable 

 distance and use every effort to get at it. Some bundles which 

 had been stacked in the yard at the back of the government 

 house, were quickly detected, and the cattle in the village 

 made every night repeated attempts to reach them, which 

 occasioned great trouble to the sentry on duty. 1 Since the above 

 was written, the Tussock has been used abundantly when made 

 into hay, being preferred by the cattle even to the green state of 

 any of the other excellent grasses in the Falklands. Governor 

 Moody informs me that in his garden it grows rapidly and im- 

 proves by cutting. There is, however, one drawback to the 

 value of the Tussock ; it is a perennial grass, of slow growth, 

 and some disappointment has been experienced in England from 

 this cause. Each Tussock consists of many hundreds of culms, 

 springing up together from a mass of roots, which have required 

 a long series of years to attain their great and productive size. 

 Our cultivated specimens in the royal gardens of Kew, now nearly 

 three years old, are in a fair way of becoming good Tussocks, 

 for the quantity of stems from each root, the produce of one seed, 

 is incalculably more than any other grass throws up ; but this 

 ball, now scarcely six inches across and not two in height, must 

 have grown to six or eight feet high, with a diameter of three or 

 four feet ; instead of forty culms, there must be four hundred ; 

 and the leaves, now three feet long, must attain seven, ere the 

 Tussock of England can compete with its parent in the Falk- 

 lands. Though, however, the stoles (if I may so call the mat- 

 ted roots of this grass) in the most vigorous and native specimens 

 attain the height of seven feet, it is certain they are very pro- 

 ductive before' they have reached two or three. By this time 

 the leaves have gained their great size, the bases of the culms are 

 nearly as broad as the thumb, and when pulled out young, they 

 yield an inch or two of a soft, white, and sweet substance, of the 

 flavor of a nut, and so nutritious, that two American sealers, who 

 deserted a vessel in an unfrequented part of the Falklands, sub- 

 sisted on little else for fourteen months. There are few plants 

 which from perfect obscurity have become objects of such inter- 

 est as this grass. The Tussock in its native state seems of 

 almost no service in the animal economy. A little insect, and 

 the only one that I observed, depends on it for sustenance ; a 

 b ^d, no bigger than the sparrow, robs it of its seeds : a few sea- 

 fowl build among the shelter of its leaves ; penguins and petrel 

 seek hiding places among its roots, because they are soft and 

 easily penetrated, and the sea-lions cower beneath its luxuriant 

 foliage ; still, except the insect, I know no animal or plant whose 



Second Series, Vol. VIII, No. 23.— Sept, 1849. M 



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