I saw humming-birds and a magnificent tree, Eucryphia cordifolia Cav., growing eighty to a hundred feet high and covered with large white flowers. This has been introduced to cultivation (by Messrs. Veitch, I think), but not long enough to show its beauty in England.
Lake Todos Santos is buried in forest as yet quite uninhabited except by Messrs. Hube and Achelis’s employees at Puella. We crossed it in another small steamer, and attempted to photograph a remarkable volcanic peak called Punta Agudo on the north shore, but the clouds which hang over it make it hard to realise the sharpness of its cone, the upper slopes of which appeared to lie at an angle of at least fifty degrees.
Landing at Petrehue on the north-west end of the lake, we passed over the southern slopes of another great volcano called the Volcan de Osorno, whose upper half was covered with snow and whose base was covered with deep beds of volcanic ashes and sand, deeply cut into ravines, which in some places were forest-clad and full of ferns, Myrtaceous shrubs and other interesting plants. Passing along the bank of the deep and rapid Petrehue river, here one hundred yards wide and quite impassable, we carnc to a great marshy flat on the shores of Lake Llanquiliue, where I had to wait a day for the arrival of the steamer which plies to the various German settlements and farms around its shores. This part of Chile has been settled a good many years and is developing rapidly. We reached Puerto Varas, on the other side of the lake, after dark, and were only just in time to catch the Pacific Company’s steamer at Puerto Montt, from whence, calling at Calbuco, Ancud in the island of Chiloe, and Corral, the port of Valdivia, I reached Concepcion and from there returned by rail to Santiago and Buenos Ayres.
Though such a reconnaissance as this gives one no right to form theories on the origin of the Chilean flora and fauna, yet I realised on my journey certain facts which I never realised by reading, and which I think may help to explain why the fauna of Chile is so poor in species, considering the immense extent and very varied climate of the country.
From a climatic point of view Chile may be divided into three regions. Of the northern part, including the provinces of Tacna, Tarapaca, Anto¬ fagasta, Atacama, and perhaps Coquimbo, I know nothing personally, but believe that for the most part they are too arid to support a rich flora or fauna, and so far as I know are characterised by a total absence of forest even on the higher slopes of the mountains. This region forms a boundary quite impassable to the tropical forms which otherwise might have been expected to extend southward, seeing that the climate even as far south as Valparaiso is mild enough to enable some tropical fruits and palms to flourish.
Though some tropical forms extend on the east side of the Andes as far south as about lat. 30° S., in the Argentine provinces of Catamarca, Rioja and Cordoba, yet they are unable to extend themselves into Chile in the way they have done in similar latitudes in North America and China, owing to the absence of shelter-giving forest along the east side of the Andes. Among birds only a few hardy tropical forms such as parrots and humming-birds exist, whilst among butterflies there is hardly one, except perhaps Terias and Callidryas, which are characteristic of a tropical
