THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE 265 



Sandwich Land, in the latitude of the north part of Scot- 

 land, was found by Cook, during the hottest month of the 

 year, " covered many fathoms thick with everlasting snow ; " 

 and there seems to be scarcely any vegetation. Georgia, an 

 island 96 miles long and 10 broad, in the latitude of York- 

 shire, " in the very height of summer, is in a manner wholly 

 covered with frozen snow." It can boast only of moss, some 

 tufts of grass, and wild burnet; it has only one land-bird 

 (Anthus correndera), yet Iceland, which is io° nearer the 

 pole, has, according to Mackenzie, fifteen land-birds. The 

 South Shetland Islands, in the same latitude as the southern 

 half of Norway, possess only some lichens, moss, and a little 

 grass ; and Lieut. Kendall 17 found the bay, in which he was 

 at anchor, beginning to freeze at a period corresponding with 

 our 8th of September. The soil here consists of ice and 

 volcanic ashes interstratified ; and at a little depth beneath 

 the surface it must remain perpetually congealed, for Lieut. 

 Kendall found the body of a foreign sailor which had long 

 been buried, with the flesh and all the features perfectly pre- 

 served. It is a singular fact, that on the two great continents 

 in the northern hemisphere (but not in the broken land of 

 Europe between them), we have the zone of perpetually 

 frozen undersoil in a low latitude — namely, in 56 0 in North 

 America at the depth of three feet, 18 and in 62 0 in Siberia at 

 the depth of twelve to fifteen feet— as the result of a directly 

 opposite condition of things to those of the southern hemi- 

 sphere. On the northern continents, the winter is rendered 

 excessively cold by the radiation from a large area of land 

 into a clear sky, nor is it moderated by the warmth-bringing 

 currents of the sea ; the short summer, on the other hand, is 

 hot. In the Southern Ocean the winter is not so excessively 

 cold, but the summer is far less hot, for the clouded sky sel- 

 dom allows the sun to warm the ocean, itself a bad absorbent 

 of heat; and hence the mean temperature of the year, which 

 regulates the zone of perpetually congealed under-soil, is low. 

 It is evident that a rank vegetation, which does not so much 

 require heat as it does protection from intense cold, would 

 approach much nearer to this zone of perpetual congelation 



17 Geographical Journal, 1830, pp. 65, 66. 



18 Richardson's Append, to Back's Exped., and Humboldt s Fragm. Asiat., 

 torn. ii. p. 386. 



