THE PAGE OF NATURE. 93 



is familiar with the fact that the reindeer moss (Cladonia 

 rangiferina, Fig. 10), forms altogether the food of that 

 animal during the prolonged northern winters. This 

 lichen grows sparingly in little tufts among the heather 

 in this country, and sometimes whitens the sides and 

 plateaus of the Highland hills, covering bare and verdure- 

 less places where the snow first falls in winter, and 

 lingers longest in summer ; but it is in the vast sandy 

 plains called by the Laplanders tundra, which border 

 the Arctic ocean, that it flourishes in the greatest pro- 



Fio. 10. CLADONIA EAXOIFERINA. 



fusion and luxuriance. There it completely covers the 

 ground with its snowy tufts, and occupies as conspicuous 

 a place in the economy of nature as the grass in warmer 

 regions. Linnaeus says, that no plant flourishes so 

 luxuriantly as this in the pine-forests of Lapland, the 

 surface of the soil being completely carpeted with it for 

 many miles in extent ; and that if by an accident the 

 forests are burnt to the ground, in a very short time the 

 lichens re-appear, and resume all their original vigour. 

 These plains, he adds, which strangers would call an 



