TEMPERATURE OF SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE. 273 



hemisphere the less ground we find for a behef in the 

 supposed inferiority of its mean temperature. What 

 we do find, in exact conformity with obvious physical 

 principles, is that in the hemisphere where the water 

 surface largely predominates over that of land, the 

 temperature is much more uniform than where the 

 land occupies the larger portion of the surface. In 

 the former, the heat of summer is mainly expended 

 in the work of converting water into vapour, and 

 partially restored in winter in the conversion of vapour 

 into water or ice. 



We unfortunately possess but three stations in the 

 southern hemisphere, south of the fiftieth degree of 

 latitude, from which meteorological observations are 

 available, and these are all in the same vicinity — the 

 Falkland Islands, Punta Arenas, and Ushuaja, the 

 mission station in the Beagle Channel at the south 

 side of the main island of Tierra del Fuego. The 

 following table shows the mean temperature of the 

 year at these stations in degrees of Fahrenheit's scale. 



If we compare these with the results of observations 

 at places on the east side of continents in the northern 

 hemisphere, we find the latter to show a very much 

 more rigorous climate, Nikolaiewsk, near the mouth 

 of the Amur, in lat. 52° 8' north, has a mean annual 

 temperature of 32-4° Fahr. ; and at Hopedale, in 

 Labrador, lat. 55° 35', the mean is certainly not 

 higher than 26° Fahr. Even in the island of Anticosti, 



T 



