474 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the Hudson's Bay Company, the enormous tracts of level land 

 which border the Polar Ocean from the North Cape to Behring's 

 Straits, across the north of Europe and Asia, and from Behring's 

 Straits to Greenland, across the north of America, a stretch of many 

 thousands of miles ; all these immense areas of the earth's surface 

 where not a tree, nor a shrub, nor a flower is seen, except the creeping 

 arctic willow and birch, and the stunted moss-like saxifrage and scurvy- 

 grass are covered with fields of lichens and mosses, far exceeding 

 any thing that can be compared in that respect among phanerogamous 

 plants. Thus, to the rugged magnificence of Alpine scenery, and the 

 dreary isolation and uniformity of the arctic steppes, and the bound- 

 less wastes of brown desert and misty moorland, to these great outlets 

 from civilization and the tameness of ordinary life, which allow the 

 soul to expand and go out in sublime imaginings toward the infinity 

 of God, these humble plants form the sole embellishments. 



So much for the distribution of these plants on the land ; their 

 range in the waters is still more extensive. Lichens and mosses cover 

 the waste surfaces of the earth ; diatoms and confervas are everywhere 

 miraculously abundant in the waters in rivers and streams, in ditches 

 and ponds, alike under the sunny skies of the south, and in the frozen 

 regions of the north ; on the surface of the sea in floating meadows, 

 and in the dark and dismal recesses of the ocean only to be explored 

 by the long line of the sounding-lead. The ocean swarms with innu- 

 merable varieties, without their presence being indicated by any discol- 

 oration of the fluid. The Arctic and Antarctic Oceans, covering areas 

 larger than the Continents of Europe and Asia, are peopled by myriads 

 of diatoms ; various inland seas and lakes are tinged of different hues 

 by their predominance in the waters ; while it has been ascertained, 

 from the soundings obtained during the investigations connected with 

 laying the electric telegraph-cable between Ireland and Newfound- 

 land, that the floor of the Atlantic is paved many feet deep with their 

 silicious shields, preserving in all their integrity their wonderful shapes, 

 notwithstanding their extreme delicacy and minuteness, and the enor- 

 mous pressure of the vast body of water which rests above them. 

 Such is the wide space which these organisms occupy in the fields of 

 Nature a prominence which is surely sufficient to redeem them from 

 the charge of insignificance. They are inferior in majesty of form to 

 palms and oaks, but in their united influence it is not too extravagant 

 to say that they are not less important than the great forests of the 

 world. 



This vast profusion of minute and humble vegetable life serves the 

 obvious purpose of preparing the way for higher orders of vegetation. 

 Nature is incessantly working out vast ends by humble and scarcely 

 recognizable means. The features of the earth are being continually 

 altered by the germination and dispersion of the algae, mosses, and 

 lichens. Bare and sterile mountains are clothed with verdure ; rocks 



