48 
AUSTRALASIAN ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION. 
Immediately surrounding each of the three groups is an area of small size over 
which the depth of the ocean varies from 500 to 1,000 fathoms. This may point to a 
previous period of elevation, during which the islands would he much larger and possibly 
may have been united. But eastwards and westwards of this and as far south as the 
ice-barrier of the Antarctic Continent, the ocean is immensely deep. For the greater 
part of the distance between Kerguelen and South Georgia it exceeds 3,000 fathoms. 
With an abyss so great to fill, a recent land connection with the Antarctic Continent 
in this sector appears to be wildly improbable. 
The flora of the Kerguelen group is poor and scanty, only thirty species of 
vascular plants having been recorded. But in sharp contrast with that of South 
Georgia, it includes no less than six endemic species. Two of these, Pringlea and Lyallici, 
are monotypic genera of remarkable distinctness, with no near allies. Their existence 
seems to prove that the ice-slieet which in South Georgia blotted out all pre-glacial 
vegetation, in Kerguelen left a vestige behind, from which a faint idea may be drawn 
of an older and more extensive flora—now vanished for ever. As for the twenty-four 
non-endemic species, with one exception (Cotula plumosa), which has probably travelled 
from the New Zealand Subantarctic Islands, they are all natives of Fuegia, and most of 
them are found in South Georgia as well. The affinities of the flora are thus unmistak¬ 
ably Fuegian; but nevertheless eighteen of the species are circumpolar, twelve of them 
being found in Macquarie Island as well. 
Still travelling to the eastward, a journey of about 3,250 miles brings us to 
Macquarie Island, the subject of this memoir. I have already given particulars of its 
position, size, and physical features, and I have mentioned the pertinent fact that it 
has been recently overridden by an ice-slieet travelling from west to east. I have also 
given full particulars of the existing flora, together with the geographical range of the 
species. Attention has also been drawn to the fact that the ocean surrounding the 
island is everywhere of great depth, and that it is not until the close neighbourhood 
of the Antarctic Continent is reached that shallower water is met with. It is quite 
clear that Macquarie Island, in its physical features and climate, its situation in the 
middle of an immensely deep ocean, and its poor and scanty flora, has many points of 
agreement with South Georgia and the Kerguelen group. 
The extraordinarily scanty flora of the South Georgia-Kerguelen-Macquarie 
areas demands a passing notice. Many years ago, Sir J. D. Hooker said, “ The three 
small archipelagos of Kerguelen Island (including the Heard Islands), Marion and 
Prince Edward’s Islands, and the Crozets, are individually and collectively the most 
barren tracts on the globe, whether in their own latitude or in any higher one, except 
such as lie within the Antarctic circle itself, for no land, even within the North Polar 
area, presents so impoverished a vegetation.” (Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc., vol. 168, p. 10). 
This vivid statement has since been proved to be just as true of South Georgia and 
Macquarie as of Kerguelen. Yet these three areas all lie within the parallels of 
54° 30' S. and 46° 30' S., roughly corresponding to the north of England and the centre 
