230 



DISCOVERY 



made during' the growing- season which ensures a 

 prompt response to the first call of spring ; buds 

 are ready by the end of summer ; in the winter they 

 find shelter under the snow or below a covering of 

 dead leaves. It is an interesting fact that annuals 

 are very rare in Greenland, only four or five flowering 

 plants complete their life-cycle in one season. In the 

 Swiss Alps the percentage of annuals falls as higher 

 altitudes are reached. 



While it is true that many of the Greenland plants 

 exhibit a characteristic and peculiar habit of growth 

 and certain external characters and structural 

 features in their foliage and stems that are usually 

 considered to be adaptations to rigorous climatic 

 conditions, others are in no visible respect different 

 from plants that flourish in a warmer and much 

 more favourable environment. The power to endure 

 hardship probably resides in some quality of constitu- 

 tion, something that is fundamental in the composi- 

 tion of their " phvsical b.'isis of life," the living 

 protoplasm. 



The high northern distribution and the abundance 

 of flowering plants in the -Arctic regions are in 

 striking contrast to their absence in corresponding 

 latitudes in the southern hemisphere. The North 

 Pole is surrounded by the Polar Sea bounded by a 

 ring of circumpolar lands ; the South Pole is situated 

 on a vast continent separated from the nearest land 

 masses by the turbulent Southern Ocean with 

 scattered archipelagoes and solitary islands, some of 

 which are of comparativelv recent origin, while others 

 may be vestiges of submerged connecting bridges. 

 Not a single flowering plant has been discovered 

 within the Antarctic Circle. The most southerly 

 representative of the flowering plants, over four 

 hundred of which occur in Greenland, is a grass 

 {Deschain[^ia antarctica) which was found in the sub- 

 antarctic region, and reaches its southern limit at 

 latitude 62° S., a position corresponding to that of the 

 Faroe Islands and the soutli of Finland in the 

 northern hemisphere. 



The fringe of Greenland where the snow and ice, 

 like winter clothes, are discarded as soon as the 

 freezing-point is passed, becomes in the more 

 favoured situations a paradise of flowers not equal 

 in brilliance to Alpine meadows at their best, but 

 characterised by a harmony of colour in keeping with 

 the sombre grandeur of the setting. The barrenness 

 of wind-swept slopes, that on the melting of the snow 

 are scarred by destroying streams leaving in their 

 track patches of withered shoots pressed against the 

 ground and dead dishevelled Willows anchored by 

 bared roots, like cables dragged taut by the strain 

 of rushing water (Fig. 3), intensifies that impression 

 of sharp contrasts that a Greenland landscape pro- 

 duces. Charles Lamb's contemptuous description of 

 seashore vegetation in "The Old .Margate Hoy" essav 



is applicable to some parts of an .Arctic land : — " 1 

 hate those scrubbed shoots, thrusting out their starved 

 foliage from between the horrid fissures of dusty 

 innutritions rocks, which the amateur calls verdure, 

 to the edge of the sea." But in the scrubbed shoots 

 of the Willows and the Dwarf Birch, with their pro- 

 fusion of catkins doomed by the force of circum- 

 stances to lead a prostrate life on bare rock, on the 

 faces of cliffs, or creeping among a miniature under- 

 growth of Moss, Lichen, and other plants, there is a 

 beauty that arrests attention ; and in the late summer, 

 when the green leaves have turned to light orange or 

 brilliant red, and the Willow catkins are covered with 

 open capsules releasing the white fluft'y seeds, the 

 ground becomes a mosaic of colour that it would be 

 diflficult to match in many more favoured lands. 



The influence of Lichens as factors concerned with 

 colour production in Nature is well illustrated in many 

 parts of Greenland. .At the small .Settlement of 



KiG. 3.— WILLOW- ".\ -.\M'\ -l"!! WITH L.\I'(JM1) KDiili. 



. [R. E. HoLTTLM, photo. 



Xiakornat the huts of the natives are built close to 

 the beach or perched on ledges on the higher ground. 

 Seen from a distance the massive and partially 

 rounded though rugged boulders and hills of volcanic 

 breccia — a rock composed of angular pieces of a fine- 

 grained and in part glassy lava embedded in a matrix 

 of volcanic ash — produce a particularly gloomy 

 impression bv the contrast of their dark shoulders to 

 the lighter hills near them ; but on a nearer view the 

 dark surfaces are seen to be almost covered w'ith 

 splashes of a vermilion Lichen. It is not improbable 

 that in the menacing headlands that guard the 

 harbour of Niakornat and partially encircle the Settle- 

 ment we ha\e the relics of a vast accumulated mass 

 of ash and splintered rocks ejected from some old 

 volcano in the immediate neighbourhood. The 

 peculiar construction of Lichens renders them less 

 dependent than other plants upon the nature of the 

 substratum on which thev grow. .As films of dull 

 black thev dapple the grey surfaces of granitic rocks 

 while other species produce a harmony of orange, 

 vellow, and grev. On stony ground among bosses of 



