THE HEATH. 



ble is more abundant than this Cladonia. Sandy 

 or gravelly plains of two or three miles in extent, 

 and sparingly sprinkled here and there with pines, 

 may be seen covered white as snow with this 

 lichen. When a forest has been consumed by 

 lightning, no vegetable for a long period can find 

 sustenance among the ashes, until at length the 

 Reindeer Moss (as it is called) springs up, and in 

 a very few years arrives at perfection. These 

 plains covered with lichen, which a stranger would 

 call an accursed land, are fertile pastures to the 

 Laplander, who, in possession of a tract of such 

 country, esteems himself a prosperous man. The 

 Laplander, rejecting agriculture to which neither 

 soil nor climate are favourable, pursues the pas- 

 toral life of the patriarch, as being much better 

 adapted to his necessities. The Reindeer are 

 his cattle and his flocks ; if they prosper, he pros- 

 pers. To these animals, naturally impatient of 

 heat, an all-wise Creator has allotted the most 

 northerly regions, such as Lapland and Green- 

 land ; but even here He has not failed to make 

 adequate provision for their sustenance. In sum- 

 mer they desert the warm valleys, and seek the 

 confines of perpetual snow, whither their owners 

 attend and watch them. At the approach of 

 winter, both are compelled to descend from these 

 Alpine heights, the former for want of the herb- 

 age which had constituted their food during the 

 warm months, the latter from the severity of the 

 cold. It is during the long and cheerless winter 

 that the Reindeer Moss is appreciated. It is then 

 the principal food of the reindeer, whose sagacity 

 is such that, however deeply the ground may be 

 covered with snow, he is at no loss to discover his 



