294 CLIMATIC CHANGES OF THE GLACIAL EPOCH. 



In spite of the low mean temperature and the moist climate, the level 

 portions of Nova Zembla are not covered by snow or ice, but are carpeted 

 with grasses and flowers,* and even forests are not wanting, although utterly 

 dwarfed in charficter, so that they consist of but little else than roots. The 

 importance of this fact makes it worth while to quote, in full, what Sjiorer 

 has to say on the subject : "• Up to this time no one has penetrated to any 

 considerable distance into the interior ; but, so far as this has been done, the 

 level Irnd has been found to be destitute of snow. In the interior the tem- 

 perature must be higher than on the coast. But as no flat region of any 

 considerable extent is known to have a colder summer than this, not even 

 that in the vicinity of the American Pole of cold. Nova Zembla ought, of all 

 known and visited countries, to be the one where the line of eternal snow 

 would descend lowest. It is well known that jahysicists have dreamed as 

 long and continuously of a land of eternal snow as the non-physicists have of 

 El Dorado, a land of unlimited gold. But both these dreams have, in our 

 world of moderation, remained imrealized."'t 



The group of islands, of imknown dimensions, lying north of Nova Zembla, 

 and almost entirely beyond the SOth parallel, is also an interesting region 

 for the investigator of glacial phenomena. These islands were discovered in 

 1873 by the Austrian expedition, of which Weyprecht and Payer were the 

 leaders, and by tliem named Franz Josef's Land. It is a region of high 

 mountains and large glaciers, of which the exploration was attended with 

 the greatest difficulties and dangers. Nearly all we know of its glacial 

 geology is due to the sledge journey made by Pa^er between Mai'ch 27 

 and May 3, 1874, in coumiand of a party of seven persons. The extent 

 of the group is entirely unknown, but it is believed that some of the 

 islands nuist be of great size, because they give rise to glaciers of such 

 large dimensions, and of which Payer remarks that their precipitous ends 

 of more than a hundred feet in hei<>;ht form the usual edo;e of the coast. 

 The most important observed peculiarities of these ice masses Avere : the 

 small number of crevices, tlie coarse-grained structure of the ice, the very 

 small amount of morainic material upon them, the entire absence of glacial 

 scratches in their vicinity, their slow motion, and the low elevation to which 

 the line of neve descends. 



There can he little doubt that the peculiarities exhibited b}' the glaciers 



* Hcuglin found 150 species of iilianerogaius, and about the same number of cryptogams, on the inland. 

 + 1. f., p. 64. 



