268 CLIMATAL DISTRIBUTION 



the summer, and seek their subsistence by hunting 

 and river-fishing, return northward in the winter, 

 build their habitations of ice, feel warm in them, 

 just because the cold is too intense for allowing any 

 of the ice to melt, even by the smoke and heat of 

 the lamps, which serve at once for light and culinary 

 purposes, and watch the seals at their breathing- 

 holes for fresh provisions. 



Even farther to the southward, the plants are 

 few ; and such as do appear are of the most humble 

 appearance. In Iceland there are a few stunted 

 shrubby bushes, but none of them of size enough for 

 a hop-pole, or even for a substantial walking-stick. 

 Notwithstanding, the Icelanders have plentiful sup- 

 plies of timber, wafted to their shores without any 

 trouble or expense of importation. Great part of 

 North America that is, the northern part of it, was 

 once one continuous pine forest, and notwithstanding 

 the " grubbing" by the Europeans who have settled 

 there, much of it is a pine forest still. In those 

 forests which have stood for ages there are of 

 course trees in all stages both of growth and decay ; 

 and as pines, in swampy places, are generally 

 assailed by fungi at the surface of the ground, as 

 soon as they have ceased to vegetate, many of them 

 are thrown down every season; and when the 

 " freshets," or floods of the spring, set in, they are 

 rolled onward to the sea. Those who live in places 

 where there is no flood, but where the surface of the 

 earth is clear, and every porous soil absorbs part 

 of the water which falls from the clouds, can form 

 but little idea of the violence of a flood over a frozen 

 surface, where the earth absorbs not a drop, and the 

 melting of the snow is added to the rain that falls. 

 The combined violence of these is very great, and 

 by means of it vast quantities of drift-wood are every 

 season, though not in all seasons equally, rolled 

 down the rivers of Northern America into ttie sea, 

 and thence distributed by the sea currents, alcwg the 



