1834.] CLIMATE AND PRODUCTIONS. 245 



Terehra, he would probably assert that the climate at the 

 period of their existence must have been tropical ; but 

 judging from South America, such an inference might 

 be erroneous. 



The equable, humid, and windy climate of Tierra del 

 Fuego extends, with only a small increase of heat, for many 

 degrees along the west coast of the continent. The forests, 

 for 600 miles northward of Cape Horn, have a very similar 

 aspect. As a proof of the equable climate, even for 300 or 

 400 miles still further northward, I may mention that in 

 Chiloe (corresponding in latitude with the northern parts of 

 Spain) the peach seldom produces fruit, whilst strawberries 

 and apples thrive to perfection. Even the crops of barley 

 and wheat * are often brought into the houses to be dried 

 and ripened. At Valdivia (in the same latitude of 40°, 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 Valdivia, 

 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 un- 

 favourable to our fruits, yet the native forests, from lat. 45° 

 to 38', almost rival in luxuriance those of the glowing inter- 

 tropical regions. Stately trees of many kinds, with smooth 

 and highly coloured barks, are loaded by parasitical mono- 

 cotyledonous plants ; large and elegant ferns are numerous, 

 and arborescent grasses entwine the trees into one entangled 

 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 S. 



An equable climate, evidently due to the large area of sea 

 compared with the land, seems to extend over the greater 

 part of the southern hemisphere ; and as a consequence, 

 the vegetation partakes of a semi-tropical character. Tree- 

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

 and I measured one trunk no less than six feet in circum- 

 ference. An arborescent fern was found by Forster in New 

 Zealand in 46"*, where orchidcous plants are parasitical 

 on the trees. In the Auckland Islands, ferns, accordl nt^'- to 



• AgrUeroi, " Dewcrip, HUt. de la Prov. de Chilo^," i?,', i 



