ARCTIC ROCK PLANTS. 275 



unchanged condition, which Professor Nordenskiold 

 thinks may have lived hundreds of thousands, or even 

 millions of years ago, the remains of one mammoth 

 being, he tells us, "in so fresh a state, that the eye 

 and trunk were quite visible." * 



The fact of frost existing always in the ground in 

 this manner migiit seem to be incompatible with 

 vegetation of any kind. Nevertheless there are certain 

 classes of plants whose regular habitat is among the 

 everlasting snows. Nearly all our principal grasses, 

 for instance, have their arctic representatives, and 

 also a good many of our hardier wild flowers. There 

 is the arctic birch, of which we have already spoken, 

 and two or three varieties of very dwarf willows, the most 

 arctic being a mere creeper, two or three inches high, 

 and a considerable number of valuable lichens, mosses, 

 saxifrages and other rock plants, whose hardy natures 

 enable them to brave the storms and extraordinary 

 rigours of an arctic climate. Here again we are met 

 with one of those wonderful and beautiful provisions 

 of Nature, examples of which are eternally before the eyes 

 of every careful and intelligent observer. The snow, 

 which buries all these regions deep beneath its dreary 

 shroud, serves as a shield and covering to protect 

 these little plants from the biting influences of intense 

 frost, and from the wintry blasts, which might other- 

 wise extinguish their feeble flame of life. They are 

 so constituted as to be unaffected by the immense period 

 of darkness in which they pass nine or ten months 

 out of the twelve, and throughout which vegetation 

 is mostly suspended by a profound and death-like 



* Voyage of the Vega, by Professor A. E. Nordenskiold, 1881, Vol. 

 i, p- 44 1 - 



