Page:The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage.djvu/19

Rh when bearing up, she ran along the edge of the berg in the wash of the surf. On the 24th D'Urvillæa and Macrocystis were seen in lat. 51° S., and the last berg on March 25th, in lat. 47° S., the ships finally gaining the Cape of Good Hope on the 4th of April 1843, within two days of three years after they had first quitted that port for the high southern latitudes.

Respecting the climate of the various regions visited by the expedition, and especially that which prevails within the Antarctic Circle, little need here be said; except that the vast proportion which water bears to land, tends to render the temperature uniform throughout the year, and the farther south is the position, the more equable does the climate seem to be. No analogy can prove more incorrect than that which compares the similar degrees of latitude in the north with those of the south. The most casual inspection of the map suffices to show the immense proportion of sea to land in the southern hemisphere, the mass of the continents terminating to the north of lat. 40° S., America alone dwindling away to the fifty-sixth degree. The scattered islands discovered to the south of this are therefore removed from the influence of any tracts which enjoy a better or continental climate. The power of the sun is seldom felt, and unless in the immediate neighbourhood of land, and accompanied by a comparatively dry land-wind, that luminary only draws up such mists and fogs as intercept its rays. After entering the pack-ice between 55° and 65°, the thermometer seldom, during any part of the summer day, rises above 32° or falls below 20°; and while the southerly winds bring snow, the northerly ones transport an atmosphere laden with moisture, which, becoming at once condensed, covers the face of the ocean with white fogs of the densest description.

All islands and lands to the southward of 45° partake more or less of this inhospitable climate, which, though eminently unfavourable to a varied growth of plants, still, from its equable nature, causes a degree of luxuriance to pervade all the vegetable kingdom, such as is never seen in climates where the vegetable functions are suspended for a large portion of the year. The remoteness of these islands from any continent, together with their inaccessibility, preclude the idea of their being tenanted, even in a single instance, by plants that have migrated from other countries, and still more distinctly do they forbid the possibility of man having been an active agent in the dissemination of them. On the contrary, the remarkable fact that some of the most