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2 6 0 FLORA ANTAECTICA. [Fuegia, the
country between Valparaiso and soutli latitude 45° on the west coast of South America, and between South Brazil
and Bahia Blanca ou the east, also found on the interYening CordiUera and shores of the river Parana.
3. L a t h t e u s maritimus. Big. Fl. Boston, vol. ii. p. 268. Hook. Brit. Fl. ed. 5. p. 90. Pisum ma-
ritimum, Linn. Sp. PI. 1027. BC. Prodr. vol. ii. p. 368. Engl. Bot. 1 .1046. Latliyrus pisiformis, Hook.
Flor. Bor. Am. vol. i. p. 158.
H ab. Cape Tres Montes; C. Barwin, Esq.
A most attentive comparison of Mi-. Darwin’s plant with European specimens of Lathyrm maritimtis has forced
upon me the conclusion, that this species, so very common in many parts of the north temperate and frigid zone, only
inhabits in the south one of the most remote and little-visited spots of the American continent. The natm-e of the
vegetation in the Peninsula of Tres Montes -with the absence of other introduced plants forbid the supposition that this
could have been imported, even were it in common cultivation either as an ornamental or cidinai-y herb. No one,
indeed, can read the accounts given by our voyagers of that ivUd and desolate portion of the west coast of Patagonia,
(well known from being the scene of the “ Nan-ative of what hefeU the Anna Pink,” *) without a conviction that it
is the last place in the world where on inti-oduced vegetation may he expected. Mr. Darwuif remarks that the
Indian race is extinct there, and such is the unfrequented appearance of the coast, that a piece of wood w-ith a nail in
it is picked lip and studied as if covered with hieroglj-phics ; doubtless with feelings in which any one can participate
who has unexpectedly fallen in with a work of art on a hitherto untrodden shore, and which vividly recaU the page
and the line of Defoe’s unrivalled work, where the youthful reader is as startled to read of, as Eobinson Orasoe was to
see, “ the footstep of a man in the sand.”
Cape Tres Montes is also described by Capt. Fitzroy as another Tierra del Fuego, “ a place swampy with rain,
toi-mented by storms, without even the interest of popidation, for liitherto we had neither found the traces nor heard
the voice of natives,” } Three deserters, whose open boat, their last remaining hope of reaching civilization, had
failed them, lived for thirteen months here on seal’s flesh, wild celery and sheU-fish, unable to pm-sue then- journey
by land, so rugged are the shores and so impervious the low forests. Such is the nature of the coast where
alone in the southem hemisphere this plant gi-ows, though appai-ently not so abundantly as on the beach in some
parts of England, else the saflors in question might have improved their daily fai-e, for Dr. Cains says, that
Lathgrus maritimm, during the famine of 1 556, afl'oi-ded nourishment to thousands of the people upon the Suffolk
coast, who had overlooked it while in their prosperity, aud when di-iven by hunger to seek some manna
ill the wilderness, deemed its appearance miraculous; so ready, as Sir James Smith ohsen-es, is man to remember
his Maker when in distress, whilst at other times he neglects what, like the best gifts of Providence, is always within
his reach.
Being very much a maritime plant and one of a quickly propagated tribe, it is not surprising tbat L. i
enjoys a w-idely extended range in tbe northern hemisphere. Still there are some peculiarities worthy of notice, even
here, in its distribution. In Great Britain, though abundant wherever it does grow, the plant is singularly local; a
few spots on the east and south coasts are its sole recorded habitats ; the Shetland Islands, where an Arctic variety
is seen, being its only Scottish, and Keray its onlyL-ish station. It is also a native of Iceland and Greenland. The
English Channel seems its southera Eni-opean limit §, whence it passes along the shores of Belgium and up the
Baltic Sea and inhabits the east coast of ^Nor-way as far as 70°. becoming more frequent beyond the parallel of 60°
* The ‘ Anna Pink ’ was one of the squadron which accompanied Commodore Anson’s disastrous Expedition,
t Darwin’s Journal in Murray’s Home and Colonial Library, p. 282.
1 Voy. of the Adventm-e and Beagle, vol. ii. p. 870.
% De Candolle gives Nice on the Mediterranean as a station, which I have not seen confirmed, (Bot. Gall,
vol. iv. p. 586).
the eastward of the north Cape again, it is plentiful thi-oughout Lapland, to the Sea of Archangel ; hut does not
cross the longitude of the Ural mountains ; thence to the sea of Okhotsk, that is all over the Sibenan plains, it is
replaced by the Lathgrus pisiformis*, L. (fide Ledebom-), but re-appears to the extreme east of the continent of
Asia, in Okhotsk and Kamschatka, affording another of those singular features in the Siberian Flora to which I have
aUnded in the note at p. 211 of tills volume. In North America, commencing on the west coast, it is to he found
at the Oregon t river in 46°, and north to Kotzebue’s Sound under the Ai-ctic circle ; in central North America,
it attains the same latitude and that of the Ar-ctic Ocean, besides following tbe great rivers up to their soni-ces in
those inland seas. Lake Erie. &c. Upon the east coast of America it extends from New York no further north than
Lahrador, in latitude 55° ; a limit upwards of 11 degrees nearer the tropic than what it attains in Em-ope, eastern
Asia, or western America. Lastly, in South America it re-appears in the latitude of 47°, or nearly that of the Oregon.
The geograpliical distribution of Lathgrus maritimus natm-aUy leads to that of the vast and important natural
family to which it belongs ; but iu the present case I shall confine my remarks on this subject to the tribe Papili-
onacem, which alone extends into the frigid regions of the northern hemisphere. The prevalence of this gi-oup, to
the almost total exclusion of the Mimoseæ, Sioartzieæ, and Coesalpmeæ, in all latitudes north of the Mediterranean
Sea in Em-ope, of the Caspian and Altai range in Asia, and of latitude 37° north, in the New World; or, in general
tei-ms, to the northward of the pai-allel of 40° ; is an obvious fact ; for the Papilùmaceæ constitute a large proportion
of the flowering plants from those limits up to the everlasting ice of the Polar Ocean. In the opposite hemisphere,
however, a whoUy different state of things prevails with that tribe. In Soutb Australia and Tasmania the Mimoseæ
rival the Fapilwnaceæ in abundance. In New Zealand only five species of the Natural Order are found in the
whole extent of the Islands, from 36° to 46° south, and none beyond, in Lord Auckland’s gi-oup and CampbeU’s
Island ; whilst in Euegia proper they are unknown. To the northward of the Strait of Magalhaens they commence,
accompanied with the Mimoseæ. In both hemispheres the Order diminishes in the proportion of its species
to those of Compositoe and Gramineæ, when proceeding beyond the temperate towards the frigid zone ; in the northern
accompanying those Orders to 75° in America, or sLx degi-ees below the extreme Umit of vegetation; wdiile, in the
southern regions of the old world, it disappears at 46°, and in those of the new at 62°, or twelve degrees short
of the latitude which some other ten-estrial plants attain.
* The accm-ate GmeUn says of this plant, “ omni per Siberia occiirrit.” Ledebom assigns to it aU middle and
soutbern Eussia, from the Caucasus to St. Petersbm-gh in Emope, and aU Asia, lying between the Caspian and latitude
60° north, and east to the Baikal sea. This range is enormous, when we consider that Lathgrus pisiformis is not an
inhabitant of any other part of the globe, nor a littoral plant ; hence, though scattered over an area inclnded between
twenty degrees of latitude and 100 oflongitude.it is, in comparison with the A. maritimus, a local species, and confined
by tolerably well marked gcogi-apbical Umits, namely by the polar ch-cle in Ai-ctio Eussia and Siberia, by the
Caucasus, Caspian and Ai-al seas and the Altai range on the south, by the Gulf of Bothnia and the Carpathians on
tbe west, and the moimtains of eastern Siberia in the opposite quarter. On the other hand, the species with which
I have compared it, acknowledges no fixed limits ; in Em-ope it as evidently seeks the Ocean as the other avoids it,
whilst in North America it crosses a whole continent. Gmelin’s fifth species of Lathgrus is very probably tbe
L. nuiritimus, wbosc range be states to be from tbe river Aldan as far as Kamschatka, thus commencing wbere L.
pisiformis terminates. His description talUes weU with that plant.
t I exclude the Californian locality, for it is doubtful whether the plant of that country be the same as the
Em-opean.
3 I