THE VEGETATION OF NORTH GREENLAND. 147 
this kind of fuel can only be regarded as of any essential use during the 
wandering life the inhabitants lead in the summer, and as a little help 
in the milder months of the winter. Of greater importance is the bed 
of vegetable remains which so generally covers the rocky ground, or 
the shingly hollows between the hills, and which in Greenland is called 
turf, though very different to the turf with us, and much more closely 
allied to the actual vegetation which grows on it. The cold climate, 
which allows only of so slowa decay and process of change into mould, 
is the cause of the unchanged state of the relics of former generations 
of plants being accumulated under the present. Even on the growing 
stems, particularly on those of the Andromeda, the dead leaves remain 
adhering for several years ; and the bushy plants which form the thick 
tufts on the rocks and gravelly bottoms can hardly be said to grow in 
earth, but rather in a thick matting of dead plants, which certainly are 
partially decayed into mould, but are far from having undergone the 
decomposition which has taken place with the plants of our turf- 
mosses, This kind of turf formation is found less in swampy and wet 
spots than on the lower hill-sides, and where there is any flat place on 
these. The greater tracts of flat land which present hollows, with 
swamps or lakes, are in general more barren, only interspersed with 
Sedges and Lichens, which form tufts around wet marshy lakes. Such 
low hillocks are found in the more southerly parts, on the coast 
and islands of Disko Bay, up to Disko and the mouth of the Waigate ; 
here the turf formation becomes rarer, whilst we perceive the com- 
mencement of a new material for fuel in the coal which is here 
found extending along the coast northward, though the turf does not 
entirely cease, and even in the most northerly district some use may 
be derived from it. There are two varieties, of no very marked dif- 
ference: the one consists principally of moss, and is chiefly found on 
the low outer islands ; it is very light and bulky, and therefore is less 
valuable for fuel, but it generally forms the deeper layer in the little 
turf island off Egedesminde; it rests on a rocky ground two and a half 
feet thick, and all beyond the depth of one foot is totally frozen. These 
beds of vegetation on low rocky islands can hardly be ascribed to any- 
thing but the manure derived from the birds that make them their 
resting-places ; on these islets such grassy tufts are often seen on the 
tops of hillocks, marked off distinctly from the rest of the ground, and 
on the steep bird-cliffs we may observe the soft green grass and sorrel 
