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 531° 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, Cockbum 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 Ornismya sephaniodes, as 

 a discovery belonging to the Coquille's voyage, in the illustrations of 

 which it is figured at plate 31. 



