Dr. Hooker's Flora Antarctica. 171 



leaves and branches. But it is on the sunken rocks of the outer 

 coasts that this genus chiefly prevails, and from thence thousands 

 of these trees are flung ashore by the waves, and with the Ma- 

 crosystis and D'Urvillea, form along the beach continued masses 

 of vegetable rejectamenta, miles in extent, some yards broad, and 

 three feet in depth ; the upper edge of this belt of putrefying 

 matter is well in shore, whilst the outer or seaboard edge dips 

 into the water, and receives the accumulating wreck from the 

 nib-marine forests throughout its whole length. Amongst, these 

 masses the best A face of the Falklands are found, though if the 

 weather be mild, the stench, which resembles putrid cabbage, i 

 so strong as to be almost insufferable. The ignorant observer at 



s 



once takes the trunks of Lessonia thus washed up for pieces of 

 drift-wood, and on one occasion, no persuasion could prevent the 



captain of a brig from employing his boat and boat's crew, du- 



ring two bitterly cold days, in collecting this incombustible weed 

 for fuel.'' 



" The ramification of all the species of Lessonia is dichoto- 

 mous; each plant in a young state consists of a few rooting and 

 clasping fibres, giving off a single stem (or petiole) and frond. 

 This frond splits at the base, and as the growth proceeds, the fis- 

 sure extends vertically upwards, till the original frond is bisected ; 

 each of the two parts is now a complete frond, altogether similar 

 to the primary one, and provided with a petiole of its own : these 

 again divide, and the process is repeated. Hence the rapid growth 

 of this genus, and hence the origin of the flattened form of ra- 

 muli and elliptic core which is placed in the long axis of these 

 ramuli and across the axis of the terete stem. It was not observ- 

 ed whether any relation existed between the number of branches 

 on the whole frond and of concentric rings in the trunk. The 

 latter are probably the indices of the number of times that a sub- 

 division of the laminae has accrued, supposing that all split at 

 about the same epoch, rather than a register of the years the veg- 

 etable has existed ; as the following account of the anatomy of 

 this species will show, 



"A branched portion of the plant, terminated by four lamina?, 

 necessarily presents subdivisions of three periods of growth : 1st, 

 the petioles of the four laminae ; 2d, the two ramuli from which 

 the four are given off; 3d, the one branch which gives off the 

 two latter: these were successively examined. 



11 1; The base of the laminae or petiole is exceedingly compress- 

 ed, and composed of a mass of cellular tissue of different textures, 

 however, very gelatinous, and modifications of the three lay- 

 ers forming the leaf; there are 1st, the superficial tissue (or cortex) 

 consisting of small cells, closely packed, and full of chromule, 

 gradually opening out into, 2d, an intermediate tissue of much 

 larger cells more loosely placed, with little or no contained chro- 



all, 



