THE PAGE OF NATURE. 97 



most important article of food which the natives of Ice- 

 land possess. In fact, without it they would as certainly 

 perish, as the favoured inhabitants of Britain without 

 the more highly organized cereal plants, which, year 

 after year, wave in all their golden beauty over the 

 whole land, and are so strikingly suggestive of nature's 

 bounty and munificence. What barley, rye, and oats are 

 to the Indo-Caucasian races of Asia and Western Europe ; 

 the olive, the grape, and the fig, to the inhabitants of the 

 Mediterranean districts ; the date-palm to the Egyptian 

 and Arabian ; rice to the Hindoo ; and the tea-plant to 

 the Chinese, the Iceland moss is to the Laplanders, 

 Icelanders, and Esquimaux. 



In Scotland, the Iceland moss grows sparingly on the 

 bare wind-swept sides and summits of the loftiest moun- 

 tains, but in Iceland it is exceedingly abundant over the 

 whole surface of the country. It attains a large size on 

 the lava of the western coast, and in the extensive desert 

 tracts of Skaptar-fel-Syssel ; and numerous parties 

 migrate to these places with all their household effects, 

 during the summer months, in order to collect it, either 

 for exportation to the Danish merchants, or for their 

 own use as an article of common food. These excursions 

 generally take place once every three years, for the lichen 

 requires that time to arrive at maturity, after the spots 

 where it nourishes have been cleared. Olafsen and 

 Povelsen, in their interesting Travels in Iceland, observe, 

 that a person can collect four tons in a week, with which, 

 they say, he is better off than with one ton of wheat. 

 We are also informed, in a report on this lichen, pub- 

 lished several years ago by the Saxon Government, that 

 G 



