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Show 300 TIERRA DEL FUEGO. June, 1834. occurs, is most favourable to the growth of trees ; on the outer coast the poorer granitic soil, and a situation more exposed to the violent winds, do not allow of their attaining any great size. Near Port Famine I have seen more large trees than any where else: I measured a winter's bark which was four feet six inches in girth, and several of the beech were thirteen feet. Captain King also mentions one of the latter which was seven feet in diameter, seventeen feet above the roots. The zoology of Tierra del Fuego, as might have been expected from the nature of its climate and vegetation, is very poor. Of mammalia, besides Cetacea and Phocre, there is one bat, a mouse with grooved front teeth ( Reitllrodon of Waterhouse), and two other species, the tucutuco (the greater number of these rodents are confined to the eastern and dry part), a fox, sea-otter, guanaco, and one deer. The latter animal is rare, and is not, I believe, to be found south of the Strait of Magellan, as happens with the others. Observing the general correspondence of the cliffs of soft sandstone, mud, and shingle, on the opposite sides of the Strait, together with those on some intervening islands one . ' Is strongly tempted t~ believe that the land was once joined, and thus allowed ammals so delicate and helpless as the tucutuco, and Reithrodon, to pass over. The correspondence o~ the cliffs is far from proving any junction; because such chffs .gener~lly are formed by the intersection of sloping deposits, whiCh, before the elevation of the land, had been accumulated near the then existing shores. It is, however, a remarkable coincidence, that in the two large islands cut off by th~ Beagle channel from the rest of Tierra del Fuego, one has chffs composed of matter that may be called stratified alluvium, which front similar ones on the opposite side of the channel~-while the other is exclusively bordered by the older rocks : m the former, called N avarin Island, both foxes and guanacoes occur; but in the latter, Hoste Island although ~imilar in every respect, and only separated by a ~hannel a httle more than half a mile wide, I have the word of J emmy June, 1834. ZOOLOGY. 301 Button for saying that neither of these animals are found. I must confess to an exception to the rule, in the presence of a small mouse, of a species occurring likewise in Pata-gonia. The gloomy woods are inhabited by few birds : occasion-ally the plaintive note of a white tufted tyrant-flycatcher may be heard, concealed near the summit of the most lofty trees ; and more rarely the loud strange cry of a black woodpecker, with a fine scarlet crest on its head. A little, dusky-coloured wren (Scytalopus Juscus) hops in a skulking manner among the entangled mass of the fallen and decaying trunks. But the creeper (Synallaxis Tupinieri) is the commonest bird in the country. Throughout the beech forests, high up and low down, in the most gloomy, wet, and impenetrable ravines, it may be met with. This little bird no ~oubt appe~rs m~re numerous than it really is, from its habit of followmg, with seeming curiosity, any person who enters these silent woods: continually uttering a harsh twitter, it flutters fr~m tree to tree within a few feet of the intruder's face. It IS far from wish' ing for the modest concealment of the true creeper ( Certllia familiaris), nor does it, like that bird, run up and down the trunks of trees; but industriously, after the manner of a willow wren, hops about, and searches for insects on every twig and branch. In the more .open parts three or four species of finches, a thrush, a starlmg (or Icterus), two furnarii, and several hawks and owls occur. The absence of any species whatever in the whole class of Reptiles is a marked feature in the zoology of this country, as well as in that of the Falkland Islands. I do not ground this statement merely on my own observation, but I heard it from the Spanish inhabitants of the latter place, and from Jemmy Button with regard to Tierra del Fuego. On .tl~e banks of the St. Cruz in 50° south, I saw a frog ; and It IS not improbable that these animals, as well as lizards, may be found as far south as the Strait of Magellan, where the country retains the character of Patagonia ; but within the |