THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. 173 



level space of ground to be lighted on, but on all sides existed 

 elevations formed by dead stumps and prostrate trunks richly 

 clothed with lichens and Jungermanniae, interspersed with 

 mossy hollows into which I sank above my waist ; while in 

 addition the ground was everywhere intersected by numbers 

 of minute rivulets, often concealed from view by the luxuriant 

 growth of the mosses and ferns which fringed their banks. 

 I had hardly entered the woods when one of the officers 

 brought me a specimen of an exquisite rose-coloured flower, 

 which I found in the course of the two succeeding years 

 everywhere abundant in the damp region of the Strait and 

 the Western Channels, and with whose beauty I never ceased 

 to be delighted. This was the elegant Philesia huxifolia, an 

 endogenous plant classed by some botanists with the Smila- 

 cece, by others with the Liliacece, and by a third party regarded 

 as the type of a natural order named Philesiacece. It varies 

 very much in its growth, for although in ordinary circum- 

 stances it forms a suberect under-shrub from one to two feet 

 in height, when it occurs close to the base of trees its branches 

 frequently elongate, and pushing themselves through the 

 coating of moss and lichens, with which the trunks of the 

 trees in this humid country are, with few exceptions, covered, 

 often attain a height of from six to ten feet or more. The 

 leaves are narrow, alternate, and coriaceous, with thickened 

 margins ; and the flower is a bell-shaped perianth, about two 

 inches long, by a little more than one inch in diameter at the 

 mouth, formed of six divisions, the three outer of which are 

 much shorter and narrower than the three inner, each of 

 which is provided at the base with a greenish-yellow glandular 

 pit, which secretes a honey-like fluid. The stamens are six 

 in number, and have the lower portion of their filaments 

 united to a tube, through which the long style, bearing at its 



