FAUX! AND FLORA. 



267 



itself ; its stiff, bristly blades attain a height of 42 to 5 feet. 

 Next comes a rosaceous plant, acaena asceitdens, which, 

 rising to a height of one foot, forms bushes that cover 

 extensive tracts of ground. There is also another but 

 rarer grass, aira antarctica, which is of some importance, 

 and in the swamps a rush, rostkovin magellanica, grows 

 in considerable abundance. As for the rest, large-leaved 

 mosses are predominant ; they cover broad plains with a 

 mat-like coating a foot thick ; and on the steep, rocky 

 slopes lichens grow, and most prominently the so-called 



Tussock Grass (after Hooker). 



reindeer moss (cladonia rangiferind) and a genus of lichen 

 (neuropogon melaxanthus, usnea melaxantha), whose sul- 

 phur-coloured leaflets are seen to gleam on high elevations. 

 In the shallows along the coast grow numerous species of 

 alga?, and most commonly the familiar sea-tang [macro- 

 cystis pyriferd) as well as another species of a gigantic 

 Antarctic sea-weed, the durvillcea. 



South of Drake Strait the flora is much scantier. 

 Nothing is as yet known with any precision of the 

 vegetation on the South Shetland Isles ; we only know 

 from the reports of seal-hunters that a kind of grass is 



