444 NATUKAL HISTORY OF 



lat. 40°. The species therefore possesses a geographical 

 range of between six and seven hundred miles. I think it 

 therefore far from improbable, judging from these facts, that 

 some future naturalist may discover Batrachia to the south 

 of the Strait of Magellan. 



On the 9th heavy rain fell throughout the day, and snow 

 descended thickly on the nearer hills, while towards the 

 evening sleet fell heavily on deck. It was bitterly cold, and 

 the landscape presented a most wintry appearance about 

 nine p.m., when the weather cleared up for a short time, the 

 snowy hills appearing very close to us, and the bare rock-faces 

 looking most drearily black. And this, the reader will bear 

 in mind, was mid-summer ! On the 10th two of the officers, 

 with myself, landed early in the afternoon, and walked to a 

 neighbouring inlet, in the vicinity of which I obtained for the 

 first time the pretty little white-flowered Oxalis Magellanica. 

 From the summit of a hill upwards of a thousand feet in 

 height I gained a fine view of the Channel, and watched 

 a magnificent snow- cloud gradually sweep down it. Heavy 

 rain fell throughout the next three days, but on the 14th 

 there was a very considerable improvement in the weather, 

 which we made use of to get under way and continue our 

 southerly course, looking for harbours on the way, our 

 researches being rewarded by the discovery of a fine new 

 anchorage in the Sarmiento Channel, on the west coast of the 

 largest of the Owen Islands, which subsequently received 

 the name of Mayne Harbour, in honour of the head of the 

 survey. Here we spent about an hour, and I landed for a 

 walk, and procured fine specimens of Lehetanthus Americanus 

 and other plants. This, as I have earlier observed, was the 

 southernmost locality in which I observed the curious 

 Lepidothamnus. In the evening we reached Columbine Cove, 



