108 OUTLINES OF FORESTRY 



stratum of winds through the southern hemisphere, they, in 

 consequence of the t rotation of the earth, are made to take a 

 southeast course. They keep in this upper stratum until they 

 reach the calms of Capricorn, between the parallels of thirty 

 degrees and forty degrees, after which they become the pre- 

 vailing northwest winds of the southern hemisphere, which 

 correspond to the southwest of the northern. Continuing on to 

 the southeast, they are now the surface winds ; they are going 

 from warmer to cooler latitudes ; they become as the wet 

 sponge, and are abruptly intercepted by the Andes of Pata- 

 gonia, whose cold summit compresses them, and with its low 

 dew-point squeezes the water out of them. Captain King found 

 the astonishing fall of water here of nearly thirteen feet (one 

 hundred and fifty-one inches) in forty-one days ; and Mr. Dar- 

 win reports that the sea-water along this part of the South 

 American coast is sometimes quite fresh, from the vast quan- 

 tity of rain that falls. A similar rainfall occurs on the sides 

 of Cherraponjie, a mountain in India. Colonel Sykes reports 

 a fall here during the southwest monsoons of six hundred and 

 five and one-quarter inches. This is at the rate of eighty -six 

 feet during the year ; but King's Patagonia rainfall is at the 

 rate of one hundred and fourteen feet during the year. Cher- 

 raponjie is not so near the coast as the Patagonia range, and 

 the monsoons lose moisture before they reach it." 



