44 2 ALPINE AND ARCTIC PLANTS 



Alpine plants, which long ages ago looked out upon a waste of 

 ice-laden waters that had engulfed the Pliocene land with all 

 its inhabitants, as securely as they now look down upon the 

 pleasant valleys of New England. It is curious, too, that the 

 humbler tenants of the sea have shared a similar exemption. 

 In the clay banks of the Saco, on the shores of Lake Cham- 

 plain, and mixed with the remains of these very plants in the 

 valley of the Ottawa, are shells that now live in the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence and on the coast of Maine, intermixed with other 

 species that are now found only in a few bays of the Arctic 

 seas. Just as in the Post-pliocene clays of the Ottawa, the re- 

 mains of northern plants are found in the same nodule with 

 those otLeda glacialis, so now similar associations maybe taking 

 place on the coasts at the mouth of the Great Fish River. 

 Truly, in nature as in grace, God hath chosen the weak things 

 of the world to confound those that are mighty, and has left in 

 the earth's geological history, monuments of His respect and 

 regard for the humblest of His works. 



It is interesting to notice here that Greenland, at the present 

 time, presents conditions as to vegetation which may, in some 

 respects, correspond to those of the White Mountains in Pleis- 

 tocene times. Its flora, though altogether Arctic, contains 386 

 species, none of which are peculiar to it, but many of them 

 range quite round the Polar circle. Of those that are not so 

 generally distributed, some, more especially on the west coast, 

 are common to Greenland and Arctic America. Others, and a 

 larger number, more especially on the east coast, are common 

 to Greenland, Iceland and Norway, between which and Green- 

 land there may have been a closer land connection than now, 

 in Pliocene and Post-glacial times. 



We look in vain among the Alpine plants, so long isolated in 

 these mountains, for any evidence of decided change in specific 

 characters. The Alpine plants, for ages separated from their 

 Arctic brethren, are true to their kinds, and show little ten- 



