244 HEIGHT OF SNOW-LINE. {cuar. x1. 
not at all. These fruits, in corresponding latitudes in Europe, 
are well known to succeed to perfection ; and even in this con- 
tinent, 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 intertropical 
regions. Stately trees of many kinds, with smooth and highly 
coloured barks, are loaded by parasitical monocotyledonous 
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. 837°; an arborescent grass, very like a bamboo, in 40°; and 
another closely allied kind, of great length, but not erect, flou- 
rishes 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 luxuri- 
antly in Van Diemen’s Land (lat. 45°), and I measured one 
trunk no less than six feet in circumference. An arborescent 
fern was found by Forster in New Zealand in 46°, where orchi- 
deous plants are parasitical on the trees. In the Auckland 
Islands, ferns, according to Dr. Dieffenbach,* have trunks so 
thick and high that they may be almost called tree-ferns; and 
in these islands, and even as far south as lat. 55° in the Mac- 
quarrie Islands, parrots abound. 
On the Height of the Snow-line, and on the Descent of the 
Glaciers, in South America.—For the detailed authorities for 
the following table, I must refer to the former edition :— 
fa 
Latitude. He Hens in fee \ Observer. « 
uatorial region 3 mean result 15,748 Humboldt. 
olivia, lat. 16° to 18°S, - . 17,000 Pentland. 
eovnat Chile, lat.33°S.  .  . 14,500 ‘to 15 ,000 Gillies, and the Author. 
hile, lat. 41° to 43°S. 6,000 Officers of the Beagle, and the Author. 
jerra del Fuego, 54°S.  . « = 8,500 to 4,000 King. 
As the height of the plane of perpetual snow seems chiefly to 
* See the German Translation of this Journal: and for the other facts 
Mr. Brown’s Appendix to Flinders’s Voyage. 
