Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/223

] found a very great difference in the temperature, amounting to about ten degrees of the thermometer, but still greater to our feelings, owing to the increased humidity of the atmosphere, the temperature of the dew point being nearly the same in both places notwithstanding so great a difference of temperature. Abstracts of the Meteorological Journal of the Erebus for November and December are annexed, to show the differences of climate of Auckland and Campbell Islands, from that of Van Diemen's Land. The temperature cannot be considered severe, when we remember that in England, which is very nearly in the same latitude, the mean temperature for April, the corresponding month, is 46°. Our stay was too short to justify any further remarks on the climate of these islands; but a series of well conducted observations, continued for two or three years, could not fail to prove highly interesting and important to the advancement of meteorological science.

Mr. Cormick, who remarks that the formation of these, as well as Campbell Islands, is volcanic, and constituted chiefly of basalt and green-stone, especially calls attention to "Deas' Head," a promontory of Auckland Island, as being of great geological interest, exhibiting fine columns, three hundred feet high, which are highly magnetic. The loftiest hill, Mount Eden, to the S.W. of our anchorage, attains an elevation of thirteen hundred feet, is rounded at the top, and clothed with grass