138 PERPETUAL SNOW LINE. 



peatedly detached from the hills, accompanied 

 with a loud report, and falling from a great 

 height were shattered to fragments at the base 

 of the mountain, there to undergo a more active 

 process of disintegration. In consequence of 

 this deteriorating process, we find at the foot 

 of the hills, and in all the places where it 

 will lodge, a tolerably good soil, upon which 

 grow several varieties of Alpine plants, grasses, 

 and lichens, that in the more southern aspects 

 flourish in great luxuriance. Nor is this ve- 

 getation .confined to the bases of the moun- 

 tains ; it is found ascending to a considerable 

 height, so that we have frequently seen the 

 rein-deer browsing at an elevation of fifteen 

 hundred feet. This elevation, it will occur 

 to many of my readers, must be above the 

 region of perpetual snow. And so, no doubt, 

 it is ;* but, during three or four months of the 

 year, the radiation of the sun at Spitzbergen 

 is always very intense, and its effect is greatly 

 heightened by the very clear atmosphere that 

 prevails over every extensive mass of snow or ice, 

 so that we find the mountains bared at an eleva- 

 tion nearly equal to that of the snow-line of Nor- 

 way ; and as vegetation does not appear to de- 



* In De La Beche's Geology, p. 24, it is given at four hun- 

 dred and fifty feet. 



