FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
quart dlietire revelling in strange mosses and lichens, and 
bent under enough specimens to start a museum ; besides, 
in one hand he carried a huge red handkerchief filled with 
stones, and in the other a bundle of shag's corpses, all 
bones and feathers. We sat down on the heather and 
compared notes, and came to the conclusion that this 
country is good and fair to see, and very like dear old 
Scotland, and that Darwin must have written about it 
when he was suffering from one of his frequent attacks of 
sea-sickness. I forget what words the great naturalist 
used, but they were to the effect that the Falkland Islands 
were a howling wilderness, waste, wet, cold, inhospitable, 
and unfit for man or beast. We would have given a 
great deal just to pitch a tent where we were and stop 
for months. 
I have written heather, but it was not heather on which 
we reposed, but Empetrum rubrum, which is much the 
same at a distance, and is a sort of crowbeny, and has 
little red fruit. It grows about eighteen or twenty inches 
high, and its roots are wide-spread and form half the peat 
•on the islands. Diddle Dee is its local name. I have a 
list of the other plants of the islands — splendid names — 
Giamai'dia Australis^ Bostkovia grandiflora, and the like, 
and I feel tempted to throw in a number here, but refrain. 
Neither does my companion approve of such inexpressive, 
unpopular names. Science is meant for all, not the few, 
he says, and we should call a spade a spade and not a 
bally shovel as the Bishop remarked. 
The next addition we made to our collection was an 
entirely black oyster-catcher, with the usual red sealing- 
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