BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 128 
unsettled weather. The first ascent is composed of low granite banks, 
overgrown with the usual creeping bushes, Empetrum, Andromeda, etc., 
interspersed with green patches of grass and moss, and with swampy 
places. Across a plain overspread with boulders brought down by the 
River Karsok, you come to a steeper terrace-like ascent, forming the 
foot of the Trap stratum, which occupies the rest of the mountain. 
The upper part of this terrace is at a height of 1000 feet, and here in 
the clefts of the rock appear seams of coal passing into graphite (black 
lead ?). 
The clouds often rest upon the whole of this terrace, and in August 
and September it generally happens that when it clears up after rain 
and snow the whole remains covered with snow, whilst below there has 
been only rain, or the snow has melted as it fell. Up to 2000 feet 
there is no great change. The soil is alluvium and gravelly, and bears 
a thick covering of vegetation, consisting of the same plants as on the 
lower land. In some clefts there are detached masses of ice, which 
seem to have been produced by snow, and to have lain for many years, 
but are not observable from below. Between 2000 and 3000 feet up, 
the uniform carpet of vegetation becomes thinner, the Grasses, Sedges, 
and Lichens which formed the mass of it are replaced by green moss, 
which at the height of 3000 feet still covers the swampy spots with 
the freely-flowering Ranunculus nivalis. At the height of 3900 feet, 
by measurement, the vegetation is no longer continuous, but plants are 
dispersed about the gravelly soil, and the swampy parts barren. Here 
the willow, Salix glauca, disappears, and we find little heaps of hard icy 
snow, traces of reindeer, and many of their shed horns are now to be 
seen. The patches of snow become thicker, and at about 4500 feet 
we reach the edge of the permanent ice and snow. Amongst these 
heaps of old snow, and by the edge of this highland ice, the following 
plants, as determined by the botanist Dr. Pauli, were gathered :— 
Papaver nudicaulis; Potentilla Vahliana ; Saxifraga tricuspidata, 8. 
oppositifolia, S. cæspitosa; Alsine rubella; Silene acaulis; Draba arctica; 
Festuca brevifolia ; Carex nardina. Besides these, a few specimens of 
Lichens belonging to the genera Peltigera, Parmelia, Capitularia, too 
imperfect to be described.  Lichens are far from taking a prominent 
place in the general vegetation. 
Nearly similar were the conditions of vegetation I observed in mount- 
ing a part of the same ridge further to the east, to a point which is 
