314 CLIMATE AND PRODUCTIONS. 



with Madrid), grapes and figs ripen, but are not 

 common ; olives seldom ripen even partially, and 

 oranges not at all. These fruits, in corresponding 

 latitudes in Europe, are well known to succeed to 

 perfection ; and even in this continent, at the Rio 

 Negro, under nearly the same parallel with Val- 

 divia, sweet potatoes (convolvulus) are cultivated ; 

 and grapes, figs, olives, oranges, water and musk 

 melons, produce abundant fruit. Although the 

 humid and equable climate of Chiloe, and of the 

 coast northward and southward of it, is so unfa- 

 vourable to our fruits, yet the native forests, from 

 lat. 45° to 38°, almost rival in luxuriance those of 

 the glowing intertropical regions. Stately trees of 

 many kinds, with smooth and highly -coloured 

 barks, are loaded by parasitical monocotyledonous 

 plants ; large and elegant ferns are numerous, and 

 arborescent grasses entwine the trees into one en- 

 tangled mass to the height of thirty or forty feet 

 above the ground. Palm-trees grow in lat. 37° ; 

 an arborescent grass, very like a bamboo, in 40° ; 

 and another closely allied kind, of great length, but 

 not erect, flourishes even as far south as 45°. 



An equable climate, evidently due to the large 

 ai'ea of sea compared with the land, seems to ex- 

 tend over the greater part of the southern hemi- 

 sphere ; and as a consequence, the vegetation par- 

 takes of a semi-tropical character. Tree-ferns 

 thrive luxuriantly in Van Diemen's Land (lat. 45°), 

 and I measured one trunk no less than six feet in 

 circumference. An arborescent fern was found by 

 Forster in New-Zealand in 46°, where orchideous 

 plants are parasitical on the trees. In the Auck- 

 land Islands, ferns, according to Dr. Dieftenbach,* 

 have trunks so thick and high that they may be 



* See the German translation of this Journal ; and for the other 

 facts, Mr. Brown's Appendix to Flinders's Voyage. 



