climate. Thus the fauna, and I think also the flora, of Chile are and have for ages been completely isolated on the north and east by mountains and deserts which are as good a boundary as sea.
In the central parts of Chile, from about lat. 32° S. to lat. 38° S., we have a climate like that of southern Europe, in which a great number of species of plants, mostly peculiar to the country, and a few mammals and birds, also mostly endemic, are found; and in this region forest begins to be found—though much of it has been destroyed by man—on the lower slopes of the main range of the Andes, and up about 6,000 to 8,000 feet from somewhere between lat. 34° S. and lat. 36° S. Forest of a more scattered and bushy character is also found on the coast range and in the sheltered and moister valleys between the coast and the Andes.
From about lat, 37° S. the rainfall, produced presumably by ocean currents, rapidly increases to such a point that near Valdivia, in lat. 40° S., the whole country with the exception of a few open savannahs and swamps is covered with dense forest, mostly consisting of evergreen trees, and inhabited by a very scanty bird and animal fauna. This forest extends across the Cordillera to a point often within the Argentine boundary where the rainfall intercepted by the high Andes rapidly diminishes, and where the region of the Pampas begins.
Many of the species constituting this fauna and flora descend to lower elevations as they go southward, and in some cases reach the Straits of Magellan, where they occur at sea-level.
There are, however, few species peculiar to the region south of about lat. 40° S., and the small number of birds and insects found in Southern Patagonia and in Chile south of lat.40 0 S. are mostly near allies of those which occur in the region between lat. 36° and 40° S. which constitute the South Chilian fauna, and which are able to endure a constantly wet climate, not, however, accompanied by any great degree of cold in winter.
The high mountain region of this Southern Andes has, however, been too little explored in a zoological or botanical sense to enable us to judge of its constituents. All we can say is that there is no reason to expect many new forms.
Mr, Elwes brought home a collection of 364 Chilean plants, which were named and described by the authorities at Kew; the list is preserved in the Herbarium there. It included five new orchids, one of which was named by Mr. Rolfe, after the discoverer, Chlorœa Elwesii. This orchid, whose handsome flowers are green with blade veins, was found on the Lolco pass, 6,000 feet up, in large tufts under Araucarias; it was common at the timber line. It is nearly allied to the Patagonian orchid, C. magellanica Hook., but its flowers are rather larger.
The author contributed a full list of sixty-nine Chilean butterflies, with notes and plates, to the Transactions of the Entomological Society in 1903.
