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S. GEOEGIA AND TIERRA DEL FUEGO. 



211 



S. Georgia is not known, but they are described as being very 

 hi^h, and in Sandwich Land, live degrees to the south, in 

 a latitude corresponding nearly to the north of Scotland, 

 mountains 10,000 feet high have been observed, and in those 

 islands, on the 1st of February, the hottest time of the year, 

 the whole country from the top of the mountains to the brink 

 of the sea-cliffs was covered with snow many fathoms thick. 



It was stated that Tierra del Fuego is only 800 miles west- 

 ward of S. Georgia. As it is in the same latitude, as well 



in the same hemisphere, the contrast in climate which it 



as 



may term 



tronomical causes. In Tierra del Fuego the lower limit 

 of the snow-line ascends, according to Darwin, to between 

 3,000 and 4,000 feet above the level of the sea, and there are 

 forests on the flanks of the hills to a height of 1,000 or 1,500 

 feet.* There are many flowers in thp 



same 



ming-birds in summer, yet there is a high range of land which 

 runs across the middle of Tierra del Fuego from east to west, 



Mt 



Horn 



them 



season. 



maj 



number of 



om 



the ocean which snrrounds S. Georgia ; but the chief cause 

 of the difference in climate is probably the absence in the 

 case of that island of a low tract of land to the north, such 

 as that low region of Patagonia which adjoining Tierra del 

 Fuego, or only separated from it by the narrow straits of 



Magellan, must 



warm 



atmosphere and raise the tem- 



perature of the winds which blow southwards from it. 



kedf 



from 



Huddle island of New Zealand, are so hot and dry as to canse 

 great floods by the sudden melting of the snow on the 

 southern Alps of that island. He observes that if Australia 



some 



a larger portion of the space now occupied by that continent, 

 he New Zealand glaciers, which are now of considerable 



* Darwin's Journal, p. 145, 209. 

 VOL. I. 



t Letter to Dr. J. Hooker, July 15, 1864. 



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