76 A SUMMER IN GREENLAND 



of a freshly broken slab of stone and allow the facts 

 discovered to stimulate the imagination, the ice 

 and snow disappear, the scrubby Willows and 

 Dwarf Birch are changed into a forest of trees of 

 many sorts, and luxuriant thickets of scrambling 

 ferns replace the stunted heaths ; Arctic Greenland 

 is transformed into a tropical scene recalled from 

 the past 1 . Similarly, pursuing the idea of contrasts 

 and shifting our ground to a gravel pit in England, 

 the discovery in a layer of peat, belonging to a 

 geological period separated by thousands rather 

 than millions of years from the present, of frag- 

 mentary though well preserved plants, many of 

 which are identical with species still living on the 

 ice-free fringe of Greenland, changes the familiar 

 landscape into that of an Arctic land: these samples 

 of a bygone flora 2 tell us that when England was 

 under the influence of the Glacial period it was as 

 Greenland is. 



In Greenland the collector of fossils digs out of the 

 rocks plants which he has gathered in the Tropics or 

 species next of kin to them; in layers of peat among 

 the deposits of lakes and rivers found among the 

 Glacial gravels of England he sees again the flora 

 of Greenland. 



1 An interesting summary of the evidence of climatic changes 

 afforded by Arctic fossil plants was contributed by Dr Nathorst 

 to the International Geological Congress of 1910: a translation of 

 this by the late Dr Arber was published in the Geological Magazine, 

 vin, 217, 1911. 



2 For details see 'The Arctic Flora of the Cam Valley,' by 

 Miss M. E. J. Chandler, Quarterly Journal of the Geological 

 Society, LXXVII, 4, 1921. 



