Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.3)

ADDENDA. (US fait connaitre que les piiiges des Nouvelles-Shetland sont couvcrtes de grands blocs erratiqiies formes de granite, et par consequent d'une nature differente des autres roches du paj's. M. James Eights, naturaliste de Pexpedition, n'hesite pas a considerer ces blocs comme ayant ete apportes par les glaces, qui viennent annuellement s'echouer et se fondre sur les plages dont il s'agit et comme ctant les indices de terres inconnues sitiiees plus prfes du pole que la terre la Trinite." I have not been able to tind any account of this expedition. Lieutenant Kendall describes fGeograjik. Journal, 1830^' pinnacles of syenite in Smith's Island, one of the South Shetland group; so that the inferences regarding tlie distances, from which the blocks are supposed to have come, probably are erroneous. In speaking (p. 272) of the rigour of the climate of Deception Island in South Shetland, I might have mentioned that Lieut. Kendall says (Geograi^h. Journal, 1830, p. 66), that on March the 8th, " We took the hint of the freezing over of the cove (lat. 62° 55') and effected our retreat." This is the same as if, in the northern hemisphere, the harbour of Cliristiansund in Norway, were to fi-eeze on the 8th of September Page 285. I have described the dimensions of the great glacier which in lat. 46° 50', sends down an arm to Kelly Harbour, and another to a flat swamp ; I now find from information communicated to me by Captain FitzRoy, that it must communicate with the channels and bays north- ward, which extend behind the peninsula of Tres Montes. Agueros, in giving an account of an expedition of the missionaries (Descripcion Huto- rial de la Provincia de Chiloe, p. 227), says, they encountered in the La- guna de San Rafael (lat. 46° 33' to 46° 48') " many icebergs (muchos farallones de nievej, some great, some small, and others middle sized." This was on the 22d of November, 1778. Captain FitzRoy also tells me, that in the account of another missionary voyage, it is said that the boats had difficulty, on account of the islands of ice, in passing through the Cano de Perdon, a strait connecting the Lagiina de San Rafael, with the other bays behind Tres iVIontes. Transposing in imagination, as I have done at p. 291, the places in the southern hemisphere to corresponding ones in Europe, these facts are the same as if, in a cliannel of the sea stretching from the Mediterranean between the Alps and the Jura, a boat should encounter in the latitude of the lake of Geneva, and on the 22rf of June, (but not on one occasion only,) so many icebergs, and of such dimensions, that the historian of the voyage should describe them as being " some great, some small, and otiiers middle sized" ! Having insisted so strongly, in this part of my Journal, that it is in die southern hemisphere, where tropical forms encroach on the temperate