300 



TIERRA DEL FUEGO. JuHC^ 1834. 



occurs, is most favourable to the growth of trees; on the 

 outer coast the poorer granitic soil, and a situation more - 

 exposed to the violent winds, do not allow of their attaining 

 any great size. Near Port Famine I have seen more large 

 trees than any where else : I measured a winter's bark 

 which was four feet six inches in girth, and several of the 

 beech were thirteen feet. Captain King also mentions one 

 of the latter which was seven feet in diameter, seventeen 

 feet above the roots. 



The zoology of Tierra del Fuego, as might have been ex- 

 pected from the nature of its climate and vegetation, is very 

 poor. Of mammalia, besides Cetacea and Phocae, there is 

 one bat, a mouse with grooved front teeth [Reithrodon of 

 Waterhouse), and two other species, the tucutuco (the 

 greater number of these rodents are confined to the eastern 

 and dry part), a fox, sea-otter, guanaco, and one deer. The 

 latter animal is rare, and is not, I believe, to be found south 

 of the Strait of Magellan, as happens with the others. 



Observing the general correspondence of the cliffs of soft 

 sandstone, mud, and shingle, on the opposite sides of the 

 Strait, together with those on some intervening islands, one 

 is strongly tempted to believe that the land was once joined, 

 and thus allowed animals so delicate and helpless as the 

 tucutuco, and Reithrodon, to pass over. The correspondence 

 of the cliffs is far from proving any junction ; because such 

 cliffs generally are formed by the intersection of sloping 

 deposits, which, before the elevation of the land, had been 

 accumulated near the then existing shores. It is, however, 

 a remarkable coincidence, that in the two large islands cut 

 off by the Beagle channel from the rest of Tierra del Fuego, 

 one has cliffs composed of matter that may be called stratified 

 alluvium, which front similar ones on the opposite side of the 

 channel, — while the other is exclusively bordered by the older 

 rocks : in the former, called Navarin Island, both foxes and 

 guanacoes occur ; but in the latter, Hoste Island, although 

 similar in every respect, and only separated by a channel a 

 little more than half a mile wide, I have the word of Jemmy 



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