ALPINE AND ARCTIC PLANTS 451 



modern evolutionists that there is a possibility of these plants 

 so changing their characters that in the lapse of ages they might 

 appear to us to be distinct specific types. The fact, however, 

 that the Arctic species have migrated around the whole Arctic 

 circle, and have advanced southward and retreated to the north, 

 again and again, without changing their constitutions or forms, 

 augurs for them at least a remarkable fixity as well as con- 

 tinuity. 



While the huge ribs of mother earth that project into moun- 

 tain summits, and the grand and majestic movement of the 

 creative processes by which they have been formed, speak to 

 us of the majesty of Him to whom the sea belongs, and whose 

 hand formed the dry land, the continuance of these little plants 

 preaches the same lessons of humble faith in the Divine pro- 

 mises and laws, which our Lord drew from the lilies of the 

 field. 



It is suggestive, in connection with the antiquity and migra- 

 tions of these plants, to consider the differences in this respect 

 of some closely allied species of the same genera. Of the 

 blueberries that grow on the White Mountains, one species, 

 Vaccinium uliginosutn, is found in Behring's Straits and 

 very widely in Arctic and boreal America, 1 also in northern 

 Europe. V. caspitosum has a wide northern range in America, 

 but is not European. V. Pennsylvanicum and V. Cana- 

 dense, from their geographical distribution, do not seem to 

 belong to the Arctic flora at all, but to be of more southern 

 origin. The two bearberries (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi and 

 alpinci) occur together on the White Hills, and on the Scottish 

 and Scandinavian mountains ; but the former is a plant of 

 much wider and more southern distribution in America than 

 the latter. Two of the dwarf willows of the White Mountains 

 '(SaKx repens and S. herbaced) are European as well as 



1 Macoun, Catalogue of Canadian plants. 



