294 COSMOS. 



form, especially with reference to the mutual relations of 

 their opposite coasts. In the eastern continent, the predomi- 

 nating direction the position of the major axis inclines from 

 east to west (or more correctly speaking from south-west to 

 north-east), whilst in the western continent it inclines from 

 south to north, (or rather from south south-east to north 

 north-west). Both terminate to the north at a parallel coin- 

 ciding nearly with that of 70; whilst they extend to the 

 south in pyramidal points, having submarine prolongations of 

 islands and shoals. Such, for instance, are the Archipelago 

 of Tierra del Fuego, the Lagullas Bank south of the Cape of 

 Good Hope, and Van Diemen's Land, separated from New 

 Holland by Bass's Straits. Northern Asia extends to the 

 above parallel at Cape Taimura, which, according to Krusen- 

 stern, is 78 16', whilst it falls below it from the mouth of the 

 Great Tschukotschja River eastward to Behring's Straits, in 

 the eastern extremity of Asia Cook's East Cape which, 

 according to Beechey, is only 66 3'.* The northern shore of 

 the New Continent follows with tolerable exactness the paral- 

 lel of 70, since the lands to the north and south of Barrow's 

 Strait, from Boothia Felix, and Victoria Land, are merely 

 detached islands. 



The pyramidal configuration of all the southern extremities 

 of continents belongs to the similitudines physicce in configura- 

 tione Mundi, to which Bacon already called attention in his 

 Novum Organon, and with which Reinhold Foster, one of 

 Cook's companions in his second voyage of circumnavigation, 

 connected some ingenious considerations. On looking east- 

 ward from the meridian of Tenerifie, we perceive that the 

 southern extremities of the three continents, viz., Africa as 

 the extreme of the Old World, Australia, and South America, 

 successively approach nearer towards the South Pole. New 

 Zealand, whose length extends fully 12 of latitude, forms an 

 intermediate link between Australia and South America, like- 

 wise terminating in an island, New Leinster. It is also a re- 

 markable circumstance that the greatest extension towards the 

 south falls in the Old Continent, under the same meridian in 



* On the mean latitude of the Northern Asiatic shores, and the 

 true name of Cape Taimura (Cape Siewero-Wostotschnoi), and Cape 

 North-East (Schalagskoi Mys), see Humboldt, Asie centrale, t. iii. 

 pp. 35, 37. 



