1834.] THE A:sTAKCT1C ISLANDS. 249 



interstratified ; and at a litlls deptli beneath tlie surface it must 

 remain perpetually congealed, for Lieut. Kendall found the body 

 of a foreign sailor which had lon^;^ been buried, with the flesh 

 and all the features perfectly preserved. It is a singular iact, 

 that on the two great continents in tlie northern hemisphere, 

 (but not in the broken land of Europe between them), w-e have the 

 zone of perpetually frozen under-soil in a low latitude — namely, 

 in 56^ in North America at the depth of three feet;* and in 

 62° in Siberia at the depth of twelve to fifteen feet— as the result 

 of a directly opposite condition of things, to those of the southern 

 hemisphere. On the northern continents, the winter is rendered 

 excessively cold by the radiation from a large area of land into 

 a clear sky, nor is it moderated by the warmth-bringing currents 

 of the sea ; the short summer, on the other hand, is hot. In the 

 Southern Ocean the winter is not so excessively cold, but the 

 siniimer is far less hot, for the clouded sky seldom allows the sun 

 to warm the ocean, itself a bad absorbent of heat ; and hence the 

 mean temperature of the year, which regulates the zone of per- 

 petually congealed under-soil, is low. It is evident that a rank 

 vegetation, which does not so much require heat as it does pro-: 

 tection from intense cold, would approach much nearer to tliisj 

 zone of peipetual congelation under the equable climate of the 

 southern hemisphere, than under the extreme climate of tlie 

 noi'thern continents. 



The case of the sailor's body perfectly preserved in the icy soil 

 of the South Shetland Islands (lat. 62° to 63" S.), in a rather lower 

 latitude than that (lat. 64° N.) under which Pallas found the 

 frozen rhinoceros in Siberia, is very interesting. Although it is 

 a fallacy, as I have endeavoured to show in a former chapter, to 

 suppose that the larger quadrupeds require a luxuriant vege- 

 tation for their support, nevertheless it is important to find in 

 the South Shetland Islands, a frozen under-soil within 360 miles 

 of the forest-clad islands near Cape Horn, where, as far as the 

 bulk of vegetation is concerned, any number of great quadrupeds 

 might be supported. The perfect preservation of the carcasses 

 of the Siberian elephants and rhinoceroses is certainly one of the 

 most wonderful facts in geology ; but independently of the 



* Kiohardson's Append, to Back's Exped , and Humboldt's Fragin. Asiat., 

 torn. ii. p. 386. 



