_Difference of climate of the Northern and Southern hemispheres._--When we compare the climate of the northern and southern hemispheres, we obtain still more instruction in regard to the influence of the distribution of land and sea on climate. The dry land in the southern hemisphere is to that of the northern in the ratio only of one to three, excluding from our consideration that part which lies between the pole and the 78° of south latitude, which has hitherto proved inaccessible. And whereas in the northern hemisphere, between the pole and the thirtieth parallel of north latitude, the land and sea occupy nearly equal areas, the ocean in the southern hemisphere covers no less than fifteen parts in sixteen of the entire space included between the antarctic circle and the thirtieth parallel of south latitude. This great extent of sea gives a particular character to climates south of the equator, the winters being mild and the summers cool. Thus, in Van Dieman's Land, corresponding nearly in latitude to Rome, the winters are more mild than at Naples, and the summers not warmer than those at Paris, which is 7° farther from the equator.[175] The effects on animal and vegetable life are remarkable. Capt. King observed large shrubs of Fuchsia and Veronica, which in England are treated as tender plants, thriving and in full flower in Tierra del Fuego with the temperature at 36°. He states also that humming birds were seen sipping the sweets of the flowers "after two or three days of constant rain, snow, and sleet, during which time the thermometer had been at the freezing point." Mr. Darwin also saw parrots feeding on the seeds of a tree called the winter's bark, south of lat. 55°, near Cape Horn.[176] So the orchideous plants which are parasitical on trees, and are generally characteristic of the tropics, advance to the 38th and 42d degree of S. lat., and even beyond the 45th degree in New Zealand, where they were found by Forster. In South America also arborescent grasses abound in the dense forests of Chiloe, in lat. 42° S., where "they entwine the trees into one entangled mass to the height of thirty or forty feet above the ground. Palm-trees in the same quarter of the globe grow in lat. 37°, an arborescent grass very like a bamboo in 40°, and another closely allied kind, of great length, but not erect, even as far south as 45°."[177]