ABSTRACT
In the South Atlantic, between 52° and 53° south latitude and 57° and 62° west longitude, lies the Falkland Archipelago, 7,500 miles from Great Britain and 300 miles from the Argentine coast. The archipelago consists of two large islands, East and West Falkland, and over 200 small islands and islets. Of these a few are inhabited by people, some by sheep, and all by birds at one time or another. The archipelago lies in the path of a deep, cold current moving northward from Cape Horn, which accounts for the cold—a mean annual temperature of 43°F (6°C)—and for the zone of persistent stormy weather in which the islands lie, a characteristic first registered by Amerigo Vespucci in 1501. The economy of the islands depends almost exclusively on the production of high-quality wool from sheep of mixed Corriedale and Romney Marsh stock with a high proportion of merino strains.
