268 NATUEAL HISTORY OF 



on shore I obtained many specimens of a Boraginaceous plant 

 with small yellow flowers, procured the previous year on the 

 coast of St. Jago Bay. This was an Eritrichium, identical 

 I believe, with a species which I observed subsequently in 

 Chili. Many other plants were also flowering profusely near 

 the beach, including Symphyostemon narcissoides, Anemone 

 decapetalay Geum Magellanicnm, Armeria maritima, Cerastium 

 arvense, a small species of Galium, and Oxalis enneapJiylla. 

 Of the last mentioned, two very well marked varieties 

 occurred — one, similar to that occurring in the neighbour- 

 hood of Sandy Point, with lilac flowers and leaves of the 

 ordinary form, that is to say, with the lobed segments 

 deflexed on the petiole ; and the other with whitish flowers, 

 marked with numerous interrupted streaks of bluish purple 

 and very narrow leaflets, which spread out at right angles to 

 the leaf-stalk. In a few specimens of this latter form the 

 streaks on the corolla were almost of a pure blue tint. A 

 striking instance was thus furnished of two very distinct 

 forms of a species co-existing in the same locality. Another 

 plant, that I now discovered in flower for the first time, was 

 a tall Arabis, with rather large white flowers, the A. 

 Macloviana, recorded previously from the Falkland Islands, 

 but not, in so far as I am aware, from the Strait. The high 

 ground above Cape Negro was in a perfect blaze of scarlet 

 with the blossoms of Emhotkrium coccineum^ the only repre- 

 sentative of the order Froteacece occurring in the Strait, and 

 which extends from the south of Fuegia as far north as 

 Valdivia in South Chili. In the Strait and Western Chan- 

 nels of Patagonia it seldom exceeds the dimensions of a 

 tall shrub, and is often not more than one or two feet in 

 height ; but in Chiloe it frequently forms a low tree, 

 which presents a very handsome appearance at the flowering 



