XX PREFACE 



The Antarctic Beech has extraordinary powers of adapting 

 itself to varied conditions of life, and grows up to the greater 

 altitude of the two. In sheltered positions, it attains some 

 five feet in diameter and perhaps a height of eighty feet. On 

 exposed slopes, it becomes a tangled scrub, so dense as to be 

 impermeable ; so that the only method of negotiating it is by 

 scrambling over, every now and then falling through. On 

 mountain tops, it dwindles to the merest plant sprawling along 

 the ground. King mentions a plant on Kater's Peak, which 

 "though not more than two inches high, occupied a space of 

 four or five feet in diameter." 



The Evergreen Beech is of straighter growth, with smoother 

 bark. In Nose Peak forest, I saw many trees four feet six 

 inches in diameter and about one hundred feet high. Of this 

 Beech, King says : — '' Trees of three feet in diameter are abun- 

 dant ; of four feet there are many ; and there is one tree (perhaps 

 the very same noticed by Commodore Byron) which measures 

 seven feet in diameter for seventeen feet above the roots, and 

 then divides into three large branches, each of which is three 

 feet through." 



As to the relative sizes of these two Beeches, the widest 

 divergence of opinion prevails as the result of individual 

 experience. In solution of this, Colonel D. Prain suggests that 

 " though both species grow together throughout the region 

 where they occur, one species may in particular localities 

 attain larger dimensions than the other, while again in different 

 localities their sizes are reversed." 



Winter's Bark is recognizable by its smooth greyish-green bark 

 and Magnolia-like leaves. I did not observe this tree any distance 

 inland, nor anywhere approaching the size recorded by Captain 

 Stokes from Chili. At Port Xaviei-, a tree felled by his wood- 

 cutters measured eighty-seven feet in length and three feet five 

 inches in circumference. The peculiar properties of Drimys 

 ivinteri are mentioned by several of the early voyagers. 

 Hawkins says : — " This Tree carrieth his fruit in clusters Jike 



