Chili, Buenos Ayres, and the southern parts of Brazil and Peru, have all, as a result of the narrowness of the continent of South America as it tapers towards the south, a true “insular climate;” or a climate of cool summers and mild winters. As far as the 48th or 50th parallel of latitude this character of the Southern Hemisphere may be regarded as an advantage, but farther on towards the Antarctic Pole, South America gradually becomes an inhospitable wilderness. The difference of latitude of the southern terminating points of Australia, (including Van Diemen Island), of Africa, and of America,--gives to each of these continents a peculiar character. The Straits of Magellan are between the 53d and 54th degrees of latitude, and yet in December and January, when the sun is 18 hours above the horizon, the temperature sinks to 4° Reaumur, or 41° Fahrenheit. Snow falls almost daily, and the highest atmospheric temperature observed by Churruca (1788) in December, (the summer of those regions), was not above 9° R., or 52°.2 Fahr. The Cabo Pilar, whose towering rock, though only 218 toises, or 1394 English feet high, may be regarded as the southern termination of the chain of the Andes, is almost in the same latitude as Berlin. (Relacion del Viage al Estrecho de Magallanes, apendice, 1793, p. 76.) While in the Northern Hemisphere all the continents attain a sort of mean limit towards the Pole, coinciding pretty regularly with the parallel of 70° the terminating points in the Southern Hemisphere,--of America, in the deeply indented and intersected Tierra del Fuego,--of Australia,--and of Africa,--are respectively 34°, 46-1/2°, and 56° distant from the south pole. The temperature of the very unequal extents of ocean, which divide these southern points from the icy pole, contributes very materially to modify their climates. The areas of dry land in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are to each other in the proportion of 3 to 1. But this inferiority in extent of continental masses in the Southern Hemisphere, as compared with the Northern, belongs much more to the temperate than to the torrid zone. In the temperate zones of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the ratio is as 13 to 1; in the torrid zones as 5 to 4. The great inequality in the distribution of the dry land exercises a very sensible influence on the strength of the ascending aerial current which turns towards the southern pole, and on the temperature of the Southern Hemisphere. Some of the noblest forms of tropical vegetation, for example the tree-ferns, advance south of the equator as far as the parallels of 46°, and of even 53°; whereas north of the equator they are not found beyond the tropic of Cancer. (Robert Brown, Appendix to Flinders’ Voyage, p. 575 and 584; Humboldt, de distributione geographica Plantarum, p. 81-85.) Tree-ferns thrive extremely well at Hobart Town in Van Diemen Island, (lat. 42° 53′), where the mean annual temperature