186 PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 



To my young friend Joseph Hooker, who, but just 

 returned with Sir James Ross from the frozen antarctic 

 regions, is now exploring the Thibetian portion of the Hima- 

 laya, the geography of plants is indebted not only for a 

 great mass of important materials, but also for excellent 

 general deductions. He calls attention to the circumstance 

 that phsenogamous flowering plants (grasses) approach 17^ 

 nearer to the Northern than to the Southern pole. In the 

 Falkland Islands near the thick masses- of Tussack grass 

 (Dactylis csespitosa, Forster, according to Kunth a Fes- 

 tuca), and in Tierra del Fuego or Fuegia, under the shade 

 of the birch-leaved Fagus antarctica, there grows the same 

 Trisetum subspicatum which extends over the whole range 

 of the Peruvian Cordilleras, and over the Rocky Mountains 

 to Melville Island, Greenland, and Iceland, and which is also 

 found in the Swiss and Tyrolese Alps, in the Altai mountains, 

 in Kamtschatka, and in Campbell Island, south of New 

 Zealand; therefore, from 54 South to 74 J North lati- 

 tude, or through 128J- of latitude. "Few grasses," says 

 Joseph Hooker, in his Flora Antarctica, p. 97, "have so 

 wide a range as Trisetum subspicatum, (Beauv.) nor am I 

 acquainted with any other Arctic species which is equally an 

 inhabitant of the opposite polar regions." The South 

 Shetland Islands, which are divided by Bransfield Strait 

 from D'UrvihVs Terre de Louis Philippe and the Volcano 

 of Haddington Peak, situated in 64 12' South latitude 

 and 7046 English feet high, have been very recently 

 visited by a Botanist from the United States of North 

 America, Dr. Eights. He found there (probably in 62 or 



