GLACIATION OF NOVA ZEJIBLA. 293 



northern latitude, the glaciers form on the mountain slopes, and where the 

 topographical conditions are not favorable the rocks are bare during the 

 summer. But on the high table-land of the exti'eme northern portion, -where 

 the elevation is over 2,000 feet, there are large neve, fields resembling those 

 of the Scandinavian Range, and on an even grander scale. Still, a considerable 

 portion of the lower part of the islands, even beyond the parallel of 80°, is 

 not permanently covered with snow. Indeed the condition of things in 

 Spitzbergen closely resembles that in Greenland, except that its high 

 plateaux are not so thoroughly united into one great snow-field, and th.eir 

 combined area is very much inferior to that attained by the inland ice of 

 that land of almost continental dimensions. 



Nova Zembla * also jjresents an interesting field for the study of glacial 

 phenomena. Lying, as it does, entireh' north of the parallel of 70°, and hav- 

 ing a quite diversified surface, we find that snow and ice are distributed very 

 unequally over the land. Its mean temperature is, for its latitude, very 

 low. According to Sporer, it is lower than that of Neu Herrnhut, which is 

 situated about lialf-way up the western coast of Greenland, and lower than 

 that of the northern part of Labrador, or even that of the southern end of 

 Spitzbergen. Sporer gives it as — 8°.91 C. The mean of winter is — 19°.66; 

 that of summer only 2^53. Regions where thermometric observations show 

 a considerably lower mean temperature than that of Nova Zembla are in- 

 habited not only by Eskimos, but by Russians, and even English. As Sporer 

 remarks, "the comparatively mild winter, during which mercury very rarely 

 freezes, — and, on the west coast, perhaps not at all — is not sufficient com- 

 pensation for the cold and foggy sununer, which is perhaps the most severe 

 one [der rauheste] known." t 



The same sort of condition prevails — as will be shown farther on — in the 

 entirely uninhabited islands in the southern hemisphere, whicli are situated in 

 a lower latitude than that of some of the most thickly populated regions 

 north of the equator, but where the mean temperature of sununer is too 

 low for the human race to exist, although the mean of the year is much 

 higher than that of many regions occupied by thriving conunimities. 



* So called usually in our geographical text-books, but of late years in most books of travel, as well as in the 

 Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, spelt more in accordance with the Russian, although Ijy no means 

 uniformly in the same way. The Russian HoBaa SeilJia, which means Xew Land, is perhaps best rendered by 

 Xovaya Zeralya, as has been done of late by sevei'al geographers writing in English. 



t J. Sporer, in NoTaja Semla in geographischer, naturhistorischer, und volkswirthschaftlicher Beziehung, 

 Erganzungsheft to Peterniann's Mittheilungeu, No. 21 (1S67), p. 63. 



