In the Southern Ocean the winter is not so
excessively cold, but the summer is far less hot, for the clouded
sky seldom allows the sun to warm the ocean, itself a bad absorbent
of heat: and hence the mean temperature of the year, which
regulates the zone of perpetually congealed under-soil, is low. It
is evident that a rank vegetation, which does not so much require
heat as it does protection from intense cold, would approach much
nearer to this zone of perpetual congelation under the equable
climate of the southern hemisphere, than under the extreme climate
of the northern continents.
The case of the sailor's body perfectly preserved in the icy soil
of the South Shetland Islands (latitude 62 to 63 degrees south), in
a rather lower latitude than that (latitude 64 degrees north) under
which Pallas found the frozen rhinoceros in Siberia, is very
interesting. Although it is a fallacy, as I have endeavoured to
show in a former chapter, to suppose that the larger quadrupeds
require a luxuriant vegetation for their support, nevertheless it
is important to find in the South Shetland Islands a frozen
under-soil within 360 miles of the forest-clad islands near Cape
Horn, where, as far as the BULK of vegetation is concerned, any
number of great quadrupeds might be supported.
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