578 HUMMING BIRDS—GEOLOGY. 
mentioned as illustrative of the mildness of the climate, notwith- 
standing the lowness of the temperature. One is the comparative 
warmth of the sea near its surface, between which and the air, I 
have in the month of June, the middle of the winter season, 
observed a difference of 30°, upon which occasion the sea was 
covered with a cloud of steam. The other is, that parrots and 
humming-birds, generally the inhabitants of warm regions, are 
very numerous in the southern and western parts of the Strait— 
the former feeding upon the seeds of the Winter’s bark, and the 
latter having been seen by us chirping and sipping the sweets of 
the Fuchsia and other flowers, after two or three days of con- 
stant rain, snow, and sleet, during which the thermometer had 
been at freezing point. We saw them also in the month of May 
upon the wing, during a snow shower: and they are found in all 
parts of the south-west and west coasts as far as Valparaiso. I 
have since been informed that this species is also an inhabitant of 
Peru ; so that it has a range of more than 41° of latitude, the 
southern limit being 533° south.* 
Tierra del Fuego is divided by several channels; a principal 
one of which is opposite to Cape Froward, and another fronts 
Port Gallant. The easternmost, called Magdalen, trends in a due 
south direction for nineteen miles, and separates the clay slate 
from the more crystalline rocks, which seem to predominate in 
Clarence Island, and are chiefly of greenstone ; though, at the 
eastern end, there is much mica slate. At the bottom of Mag- 
dalen Sound the channel turns sharply to the westward ; and, 
after a course of about forty miles, meets the Barbara Channel, 
which, as above-mentioned, communicates with the Strait opposite 
to Port Gallant, and both fall into the sea together. Magdalen 
Sound and its continuation, Cockburn Channel, are almost free 
from islands and rocks; but the Barbara Channel], which separates 
* This bird, although not rare in several English collections had never 
been noticed until I forwarded it to England in the early part of the 
year 1827, when my friend Mr. Vigors described it in the Zoological 
Journal for the month of November 1827 (vol. iii. p. 432), under the 
name of Mellisuga Kingii. Shortly afterwards, M. Lesson published it 
in his Manuel d’Ornithologie (vol. ii. p. 80), as Ormismya sephaniodes, as 
a discovery belonging to the Coquille’s voyage, in the illustrations of 
which it is figured at plate 21. 
