March 5, 1883] 
tinguished. A remarkable feature in the vegetation is 
the almost total absence of endemicforms. The possible 
important exceptions are the native palms. There are 
two or possibly three species, of which one belongs to the 
genus Sabai. Without due investigation, it has been 
generally accepted as a fact that there was only one indi- 
genous palm, and that this was identical with the Sabal 
Palmetto of south-eastern North America; but in elabo- 
rating the palms for the “ Gexera Plantarum,’ Sir Joseph 
Hooker became aware that the imperfect herbarium 
specimens in this country represent two species, one of 
them at least evidently different from Sadal Palmetto. 
Several historical passages in Sir J. H. Lefroy’s work on 
the Bermudas confirm this view. Thus, in one place it 
is recorded that the only food certain fishermen took out 
to sea with them on a given occasion was “ Palmitoe 
berries ” ; and in another place that the workmen did not 
hesitate to share this fruit with pigs and other animals, 
and even preferred it to bread to eat with their meat. 
Every effort is being made to obtain material this season 
to set this question at rest. The earliest references we 
find to the vegetable productions of these islands are in the 
“ Historye of the Bermudaes,” edited by Sir J. H. Lefroy, 
and some of these are valuable, because they enable us to 
say with certainty that one species of Opuntia, for 
example, existed in abundance previous to the settlement 
of the islands. 
Francois André Michaux was the first botanist who 
visited the Bermudas. In his case it was unintentional, 
the fortunes of war having been the cause of his spending 
a week there in 1806. He published an interesting 
sketch of the vegetation, though the following extract 
reveals a want of exactitude : “ Parmi ces plantes [z.e. les 
plantes naturelles au pays] on en trouve plusieurs de 
Vancien continent, qui ne paroissent pas de nature a y 
avoir été transportées: telles sont Verbascum thapsus, 
Anagallis arvensis, Mercurialis annua, Leontodon ta- 
vaxacum, Plantago major, Gentiana nana, Oxalis aceto- 
sella, &c.” The two last names must hive been a slip of 
the pen. Since Michaux’s time two imperfect lists of 
Bermudan plants have been published, both in 1873. One, 
by J. M. Jones, F.LS., is marred by some rather gross 
errors in classification and nomenclature, yet it contains 
some interesting information. The other, by Dr. J. 
Rein, was prepared with greater care, and contains 128 
species of introduced and indigenous flowering plants 
and ferns, besides upwards of too alge. Altogether Mr. 
Moseley collected 162 species of plants. In addition to 
these is a considerable number sent to Kew by Sir J. H. 
Lefroy during his governorship of the islands, making 
a total of about 320 species that occur in a wild state. 
These may be classified as follows: indigenous, 130; 
probably indigenous, 57 ; certainly introduced, 133. The 
last number would be higher if we included solitary waifs 
of other species. 
Next in order of the Challenger collections come those of 
St. Paul’s Rocks and the island of Fernando Noronha, in 
which Mr. Moseley collected about sixty species, including 
a new species of Oxalis, one new Asclepiad, and one 
fig, &c. Had permission to collect objects of natural his- 
tory not been withdrawn after the first evening, there is 
no doubt this collection would have been an important 
one. 
Proceeding southward and taking the other islets on 
our way, we have Ascension, St. Helena, Trinidad (off 
the coast of Brazil, in about 20° 30’ S. lat.), Tristan 
d’ Acunha, and the neighbouring islets Inaccessible and 
Nightingale; and thence southward and eastward, Gough 
Island, Lindsay and Bouvet Islands, Prince Edward and 
Marion Islands, the Crozets, Kerguelen Island, the Heard 
group, St. Paul and New Ainsterdam. With the exception 
perhaps of Kerguelen Island, the published accounts of the 
botany of these oceanic islets are all most imperfect and 
scattered. We are unaware of any complete enumeration 
‘NATURE 
463 
of the exceedingly meagre indigenous flora of Ascension. 
St. Helena has fared better ; but the fifty or so indigenous 
species are lost amongst the 1000 species of introduced 
plants enumerated in Mr. Melliss’s book “St. Helena,” 
the botanical value of which consists chiefly in the figures 
of the endemic plants. Moreover Mr. Melliss did not 
elaborate the synonymy of the flora, and some of the 
Cyperacez were undetermined, whilst a few, we believe, 
were omitted. 
The island of Trinidad is rather farther from the coast 
of Brazil than the Bermudas are from North Carolina, 
and very little is known of its vegetation. On the out- 
ward voyage of Sir J. Ross’s Antarctic Expedition, Sir 
Joseph Hooker and some of the other officers landed on 
a small rocky cove, where they were unable to scale the 
barrier cliffs; so they could not penetrate to the interior of 
the island, and they brought away only one fern (Poly- 
podium lepidopteris) and one sedge (/imbristylis, sp.), 
though there were tree-ferns and other trees, in sight from 
the ship, on another part: of the island. In 1874 Dr. 
Ralph Copeland; of the Dunecht Observatory, who 
accompanied one of the transit expeditions, landed on 
the east side of the island, and succeeded in reaching the 
elevated centre, where he found several ferns in. great 
luxuriance, and collected a few scraps of plants, including 
a new tree-fern. The most interesting plant,;showever, 
was Asplenium compressum, a fern previously known only 
from St. Helena, though Melliss, by some unfortunate 
slip, records it from South Africa, Madagascar, &c. Dr. 
Copeland further states that, although most of the. valleys 
of the north side of the island contained enormous 
numbers of dead trees, not a single living one was to be 
seen, except near the highest points. They appeared to 
have been dead many years and were mostly overturned. 
He was unable to investigate the phenomenon, but sug- 
gests that they may have been destroyed by goats, though 
he adds not a mammal of any kind was seen. 
Tristan d’Acunha itself was explored by Dupetit 
Thouars in 1793, and he described the plants in a paper 
which he read before the /uzs¢z¢ut of France in 1803. 
The next botanist who visited the island was Carmichael, 
who published an enumeration of the plants he collected 
in the 7yansactions of the Linnean Society. Mr. Moseley 
botanised the same island and the neighbouring Nightin- 
gale and Inaccessible Islands, and collected not only 
those previously known, but also some new species of 
Cyperacee. Previously, too, Guaphalium pyramidale, 
Thouars, was unknown at Kew, or rather a young plant 
of it collected by Carmichael could not be identified as 
such with certainty. 
We have little space left, so wecan merely mention the 
groups of islets in the Southern Ocean. Mr. Moseley added 
considerably to our knowledge of the flora of Marion 
Island and the Heard Group, and Kerguelen Island, 
whilst the Americans, Germans, and French, of their 
respective expeditions, investigated the Crozets and New 
Amsterdam and St. Paul’s Islands. Kerguelen Island, 
the largest by far of all these oceanic islets, being about 
eighty miles in diameter, has been explored by the natur- 
alists of the English, German, and American transit 
expeditions, and the results published. One of the most 
interesting discoveries of late years connected with the 
vegetation of these islets was made by the late Capt. 
Goodenough, about ten years ago, when he collected 
Phylica arborea in Amsterdam Island, till then only 
known in the island of Tristan d’Acunha, separated there- 
from by ninety degrees of longitude, which in this latitude 
are equal toa distance of about 4700 miles. Mr. Moseley 
also found it abundantly in Inaccessible and Nightingale 
Islands. Phylica arborea is likewise remarkable in being 
the only plant of these southern islets that is arboreous in 
habit, though at the outside it is only about twenty feet 
high in the most sheltered localities. 
W. BOTTING HEMSLEY 
