without being particularly warmly clad, and yet not feeling the least cold; and in the winter, the thermometer, on similar occasions, has been at 24° and 26° without my suffering the slightest inconvenience. This I attributed at the time to the peculiar stillness of the air, although, within a short distance in the offing and overhead, the wind was high.
Whilst upon this subject, them are two facts which may be mentioned as illustrative of the mildness of the climate, notwithstanding the lowness of the temperature. One is the comparative warmth of the sea near its surface, between which and the air, I have, in the month of June, the middle of the winter season, observed a difference of 30°, upon which occasion the sea was covered with a cloud of steam. The other is, that parrots and humming-birds, generally the inhabitants of warm regions, are very numerous in the southern and western parts of the Strait—the former feeding upon the seeds of the Winter's bark, and the latter have been seen by us chirping and sipping the sweets of the Fuchsia and other flowers, after two or three days of constant rain, snow, and sleet, during which the thermometer has been at freezing point. We saw them also in the month of May upon the wing, during a snow shower; and they are found in all parts of the south-west and west coasts as far as Valparaiso. I have since been informed that this species is also an inhabitant of Peru; so that it has a range of more than 41° of latitude, the southern limit being 53½° south[1].
Tierra del Fuego is divided into three large islands by two channels; one of which is opposite to Cape Froward, and the other fronts Port Gallant. The easternmost, Magdalen Sound, trends in a due south direction for nineteen miles, and separates the clay slate from the more crystalline rocks which seem to predominate in Clarence Island, and are chiefly of greenstone; though, at the eastern end, there is much mica slate. At the bottom of Magdalen Sound the channel turns sharply to the westward; and after a course of about forty miles., meets the Barbara Channel, which, as above-mentioned, communicates with the Strait opposite to Port Gallant, and both fall-into the sea together. Magdalen Sound and its continuation, Cockburn Channel, are almost quite free from islands and rocks; but the Barbara Channel, which separates the granite from the greenstone and mica slate districts, is throughout thickly strewed with islands, which reduce
- ↑ This bird, although not rare in several English collections, had never been noticed until I forwarded it to England in the early part of the year 1827, when my friend Mr. Vigors described it in the Zoological Journal for the month of November, 1827, (vol. iii. p. 432,) under the name of Melllsuga Kingii. Shortly afterwards, M. Lesson published it in his Manuel d'Ornithologie, (vol ii.. p. B0,) as Ornismya sephaniodes, as a discovery belonging to the Coquille's voyage, in the illustrations of which is is figured at plate 31.
