THE ANTAKCTIC REGIONS AND THEIU CLIMATOLOGY. 4G1 



annual precipitation* at the rate of 577.6 inches during the six 

 months of S.W. monsoons — from May to October. Surely no one 

 will maintain that this vapour, after rising from the sea, reached 

 the height of 4500 feet for the^rs^ time when it was blown upon 

 the peaks of Cherraponjie. Islands in the South Sea are ever- 

 lastingly cloud-capped. If it be mere refrigeration that condenses 

 this vapour, why, one might ask, should not the clouds form at 

 the same height above the sea whether there be an island below 

 or not, and why should not these clouds precipitate as copiously 

 upon the water, as they do upon the land ? "We only know that 

 they do not. 



866. The climates of corresponding shores and latitudes north and 

 south. — Captains King and Fitzroy exposed their rain gauge on 

 the western slopes of the Patagonian Andes, and it collected 

 153.75 inches in forty-one days ; that is, at the rate, as alread}' 

 (§ 827) stated, of 1368.7 inches in the year. The latent heat that 

 is liberated during these rains gives to Eastern Patagonia its mild 

 climate. It is this latent heat which causes the irregularity in 

 the barometric curve (§ 858) between the parallels of 50°-55° S. 

 Here the westerly winds prevail ; they carry over to the eastern 

 coasts the air that, in passing the mountains, is warmed by this 

 liberated heat ; and thus, as I have already (§ 729) endeavoured 

 to show, we have an exception to the rule under which meteoro- 

 logists ascribe cold and severe climates to the windward or 

 western, soft and mild to the leeward or eastern, shores of 

 extra-tropical oceans. Labrador and the Falkland Islands "f are 

 in corresponding latitudes north and south. They are both on 

 the windward shore of the Atlantic ; they occupy relatively the 

 same position with regard to the wind. Labrador is almost 

 uninhabitable on account of the severity of its climate ; but in 

 the Falkland Islands and their neighbouring chores the cattle 

 find pasturage throughout the winter. The thermometrical differ- 

 ence of climate at these two places, north and south, may be 

 taken as a sort of index to the relative difference between the 

 arctic and antarctic climates of our planet. 



867. Tliermal difference hetween arctic and antarctic climates. — 

 Along the eastern base of the Eocky Mountains the isotherms 



* Eeport of the twenty-second meeting of the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, held at Belfast in September, 1852. 

 t Maury's Sailing Directions, sixth edition, p. 553. 



