142 



THE WORLD OF LIFE 



CHAP. 



is perfect. In a fortnight the endless waves of monotonous white 

 snow have vanished, and between the northern limit of forest growth 

 and the shores of the Polar basin smiles a fairy-land, full of the 

 most delightful little lakes and tarns, where phalaropes swim about 

 amongst ducks and geese and swans, and upon whose margins stints 

 and sandpipers trip over the moss and the stranded pond-weeds, 

 feeding upon the larvae of mosquitoes, or on the fermenting frozen 

 fruit of last year's autumn. 



" It is incredible how rapidly the transformation is completed. 

 Twelve hours after the snow had melted the wood-anemone was in 



Fig. 18. — Midsummer on the Tundra, at the Mouth of the 



Petchora River. 



flower, and twenty-four hours after the yellow flowers of the marsh- 

 marigold opened. In a short time the country looked like an 

 English garden run wild. On the Arctic Circle wild onions, wild 

 rhubarb, pansies, Jacob's ladder, purple anemones, dwarf roses, and 

 a hundred other flowers made the country quite gay ; whilst on the 

 tundras wild-fruits of various kinds — crowberry, cranberry, cloud- 

 berry, arctic strawberry — were blended with reindeer-moss and other 

 lichens, together with the most characteristic flowers of an Alpine 

 flora — gentians, saxifrages, forget-me-nots, pinks, monkshoods (both 

 blue and yellow), and sheets of the Silene acaulis, with its deep-red 

 flowers. The Alpine rhododendron was replaced by a somewhat 

 similar shrub, Ledum palustre ; but the flora, on the whole, was like 

 that of the Engadine brought down to the level of the sea. 



