4 THE ANIMALS OF ARCTIC ASIA 



while the brief summer ends in August. Although during the greater part of 

 July and August the sun never sets, its warmth is for the most part used up in 

 melting the enormous masses of ice and snow, so that very little remains for 



© 



warming the air. 



The summer temperature varies much in different parts of the Boreal area, 

 hut is almost everywhere low, even during July. Fogs are frequent, and in some 

 parts occur continually, being often so dense that objects cannot be recognised even 

 a yard distant. So cold and penetrating, indeed, is this fog, that it wets every- 

 thing like rain, and sometimes can hardly be distinguished from a drizzle. It is 

 clear that such a brief and foggy summer cannot allow the warmth of the sun to 

 penetrate the frozen ground very deeply: and at the most the warming influence 

 extends only to a depth of from 12 to 18 inches, below which the ground remains 

 frozen solid. In spite of this permanently frozen soil, the Arctic countries, where 

 free from ice in summer, are characterised by a vegetation, which although poor in 

 3p cies clothes a large extent of the tundra with a green mantle, in which moss 

 j plays a conspicuous part. Only indeed in the southern parts of the tundra, on the 

 hanks of rivers, and in fiords, are willow-bushes and small meadows, or thickets of 

 evergreen small-leaved shrubs, rising here and there among mosses, met with. 

 Where the most severe climate holds sway, the vegetation covers only small 

 isolated spots separated by the bare stony soil, where the melted snow gathers in 

 flat cakes on the ground. In such spots, where the soil becomes a swamp containing 

 thin layers of peat, are the flats of the tundra carpeted with a few flowering plants. 

 Those most sheltered against the icy winds form, indeed, warm areas where the 

 almost vertical rays of the sun melt so much of the ice and snow that plants 



ive such a supply of water as to cause them to grow with the vigour of those 

 in the flower-beds of a southern garden. These flowery oases interrupt, however, 

 only at rare intervals the dead monotony of the tundra, as the time for develop- 

 ment at the disposal of Arctic plants is limited to a short period of some eight or 

 nine weeks' duration. 



In spite, however, of the moistness of the Arctic summer, the character of the 



station in these tracts bears a considerable resemblance to that of the deserts 

 of more southern latitudes, for owing to the frozen subsoil the roots of the plants 

 Buffer from dryness at a slight depth, and therefore their leaves, like those of 

 desert plants, are adapted for retaining water. In general the leaves of 

 Ar.-tic plants are either of a juicy, or a leathery and hard type, and their scaly or 

 spiny form presents but little surface to the air, and thus checks wasteful 

 evaporal ion. 



Monotony is the prevailing note of the tundra; everywhere wind and silence, 

 the sun unci- one long monotonous day, lighted by the pale moon-like sun in a veil 

 off Far or near there is no green like that of the grassy plains of Europe, 



although bere and I here flowery patches of the tundra heather (Cassiope tetragona), 

 the crow-berry (Empetrum nigrum), or the mountain avens (Dri/as octopetab'), 

 relieve the dull monotone. Here and there also the white coral-like reindeer 



• (Cladonia rangiferina) spreads itself over the ground, while in its midst 



half-hidden dwarf willow, or a poor little blossom of the golden saxifrage 



( 7* ryaoeplen lum alter n ifolvum), affords a brighter bit of colour. In places again 



