76 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE 
two miles of the harbour, thus proving that Mr. Anderson ^ 
was either not ingenious or not ingenuous. 
During the two months of his stay here, while the portable 
observatory was set up for a long series of magnetic observa- 
tions, not only did he enlarge the list of local species from 
18 to 150, especially among the Cryptogams, but, by analysis 
of his material here and elsewhere, he was able to show 
the relative increase among the lower forms of Antarctic 
vegetation,^ the peculiarities of plant life in the lonely 
Oceanic islands ; the relation of the island floras to each 
other and to those of the Southern Continents and of the 
Arctic regions. 
His Journal records a curious discovery in the two small 
lakes between Christmas Harbour and Northwest Bay. 
In these lakes there occurs a most remarkable plant, 
which resembles Sahularia aquatica, forming green patches 
a foot or two below the surface of the water on a loose mudd}^ 
bottom ; here it flowers, the close imbrication of the calicine 
segments and those of the Corolla protecting the stamens 
from the influence of the water. Each germen contains 
a small bubble of air, generated, of course, within the 
ovary. ^Yinter seems to be its flow^ering season, and I 
found it in flower after a long search, under a coating 
of 2 inches of ice ; as far as I have hitherto examined 
it seems to differ from the characters of any Natural 
Order. 
The * Cabbage ' {Pringlea antiscorhutica) , as has been said, 
comes in for a good deal of notice, along with other useful 
plants on the island. He writes in his Journal : 
Even in this remote corner of the globe, and scanty 
though the vegetation be, it has more than an ordinary 
interest, from the utihty of two of its products. The 
^ William Anderson, at first surgeon's mate, afterwards naturalist, on the 
Resolution under Captain Cook. In the account of Cook's voyages, he is 
referred to as ' the ingenious Mr. Anderson.' He wrote a full account of 
the Kerguelen Cabbage aforesaid {Pringlea antiscorhutica). 
* Dicotyledons to Monocotyledons as 1:2; grasses aa 1 : 2*6 of the 
whole. 
