1834.] THE ANTARCTIC ISLANDS. 181 



depth beneath the surface it must remain perpetually congealed, for 

 Lieutenant Kendall found the body of a foreign sailor which had long been 

 buried, with the flesh and all the features perfectly preserved. It is a 

 singular fact, that on the two great continents in the northern hemi- 

 sphere (but not in the broken land of Europe between them), we 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 ex- 

 cessively cold, but the summer 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 perpetually congealed under-soil, is low. It is evident 

 that a rank vegetation, which does not so much require heat as it 

 does protection from intense cold, would approach much nearer to 

 this zone of perpetual congelation under the equable climate of the 

 southern hemisphere, than under the extreme climate of the northern 

 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 vegetation 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 imagined 

 difficulty of supplying them with food from the adjoining countries, the 

 whole case is not, I think, so perplexing as it has generally been 

 considered. The plains of Siberia, like those of the Pampas, appear to 

 have been formed under the sea, into which rivers brought down the 

 bodies of many animals ; of the greater number of these, only the 

 skeletons have been preserved, but of others the perfect carcass. Now 

 it is known, that in the shallow sea on the arctic coast of America the 

 bottom freezes, f and does not thaw in spring so soon as the surface of 

 the land ; moreover at greater depths, where the bottom of the sea does 

 not freeze, the mud a few feet beneath the top layer might remain even 

 in summer below 32, as is the case on the land with the soil at the 

 depth of a few feet. At still greater depths, the temperature of the mud 



* Richardson's Append, to "Back's Exped.," and Humboldt's "Fragm. 

 Asiat.," torn, ii., p. 386. 



f Messrs. Dease & Simpson, in Geographical Journal, vol. viii., pp. 2l8, 220, 



