252 ANCIENT DWARF TREES. 



found in sheltered spots ; these extraordinary little trees, 

 if we may so call them, are birches of the variety " Betula 

 Nana " (Var. Relicta) with stems which are hardly thicker 

 than a quill, or higher than a man's knee : yet these truly 

 Lilliputian representatives of the forest monarchs are 

 some of them of very great age; having contrived 

 to maintain existence through long periods of time, 

 in spite of the death-like slumber which the icy breath 

 of a Polar winter imposes upon them for at least nine to 

 ten months out of every year. These stunted descendants 

 of a fine, hardy, free-growing class of timber however, 

 furnish us with a wonderful example of the extraor- 

 dinary vitality which certain forms of vegetable life 

 possess, under w T hat appears to be almost every species 

 of adverse circumstance and competent judges gener- 

 ally suppose them to be a survival from the era when 

 Spitzbergen possessed a warmer climate than she has 

 done during historic time. 



If this be, as it probably is, the fact, it is worth 

 while to pause for a moment to consider what such 

 a circumstance implies. 



The records of the human race are now known to 

 go back in the case of some of the oriental dynasties, 

 for a greater number of thousands of years than is 

 generally supposed. The present existing history of 

 Egypt for instance, carries us back for a period of at 

 least 6000 years. The high artistic perfections of its 

 people show that it was an ancient empire then, but 

 during that period we have what constitutes almost 

 irrefragible evidence that the climate of Egypt, and 

 therefore presumably those of the rest of the earth also, 

 have not undergone any very great or material 

 change. 



