THE COLDER TEMPERATE ZONE. 67 



east as 80, and in the 59th degree of latitude. We will 

 take this memorandum with us, and all the rest we have 

 been making in the Northern Hemisphere, that we may the 

 better compare what we have seen, with the character of 

 vegetation in the southern extremity of South America, in 

 Tierra del Fuego, Staten Land, the Falkland Islands and 

 others, which were visited and explored by Dr. Hooker some 

 twelve years since, when he accompanied Sir James Boss 

 on his Antarctic expedition, and of which he has published 

 a most interesting and beautifully illustrated Plora. 



Only a few portions of the extremity of South America 

 are known. The woods in some parts are described as " so 

 thick that the sun's rays cannot penetrate them; but the 

 trees which compose them never grow very high, though 

 their trunks are of a considerable thickness at the base ;" 

 they are chiefly two kinds of Beech, and an evergreen tree 

 called Drimys Winteri, or Winters-bark. On the western 

 coast, the ground in these forests is covered with moss. 



It is only in the middle part of the Straits of Magellan 

 that vegetation appears to be luxuriant ; there also the prin- 

 cipal trees are the Beech (of which one species, Fagus betit- 

 loides, is an evergreen) and the Winter's -bark. Some of 

 the Beeches grow to a great thickness. The evergreen trees 



