260 



CHARLES DARWIN 



'for 600 miles northward of Cape Horn, have a very similar 

 aspect. As a proof of the equable climate, even for 300 or 

 400 miles still further northward, I may mention that in 

 Chiloe (corresponding in latitude with the northern parts 

 of Spain) the peach seldom produces fruit, whilst straw- 

 berries and apples thrive to perfection. Even the crops of 

 barley and wheat 9 are often brought into the houses to be 

 dried and ripened. At Valdivia (in the same latitude of 

 40 0 , with Madrid) grapes and figs ripen, but are not com- 

 mon; olives seldom ripen even partially, and oranges 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 south- 

 ward of it, is so unfavourable to our fruits, yet the native 

 forests, from lat. 45 0 to 38 0 , 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 37 0 ; an arbor- 

 escent grass, very like a bamboo, in 40 0 ; and another closely 

 allied kind, of great length,, but not erect, flourishes even as 

 far south as 45 0 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 luxuriantly 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 orchideous plants are parasitical on the trees. 

 In the Auckland Islands, ferns, according to Dr. Dieffen- 

 bach 10 have trunks so thick and high that they may be almost 



9 Agiieros, Descrip. Hist, de la Prov. de Chiloe, 1791, p. 94. 



10 See the German Translation of this Journal; and for the other fact^ 

 Mr. Brown's Appendix to Flinders's Voyage. 



