de la Prov.

de Chiloe" 1791 page 94.) At Valdivia (in the same latitude of 40 degrees with Madrid) grapes and figs ripen, but are not common; olives seldom ripen even partially, and oranges not at all.

These fruits, in corresponding latitudes in Europe, are well known to succeed to perfection; and even in this continent, at the Rio Negro, under nearly the same parallel with Valdivia, sweet potatoes (convolvulus) are cultivated; and grapes, figs, olives, oranges, water and musk melons, produce abundant fruit.

Although the humid and equable climate of Chiloe, and of the coast northward and southward of it, is so unfavourable to our fruits, yet the native forests, from latitude 45 to 38 degrees, almost rival in luxuriance those of the glowing intertropical regions.

Stately trees of many kinds, with smooth and highly coloured barks, are loaded by parasitical monocotyledonous plants; large and elegant ferns are numerous, and arborescent grasses entwine the trees into one entangled mass to the height of thirty or forty feet above the ground.