LIFE IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS 



By Professor WILLIAM H. BREWER 



[SPECTS which life assumes in the Arctic 

 regions are a delight to the traveler. 

 Its abundance is a surprise alike to the 

 unscientific summer visitor and to the 

 naturalist, while its variety seems to be 

 illogical and contrary to what we should 

 expect of nature. Vegetation grows large 

 and abundant only in warmer climates and warmer waters; 

 and as animal life is dependent on the vegetable kingdom 

 for food, directly or indirectly, we might naturally expect 

 the living things to be very different from what they actu- 

 ally are in the Arctic regions. 



In warm climates, individual plants are very much larger 

 than anything of the animal kind found there. Even the 

 elephant is small compared with some of the majestic 

 trees which shelter it. In the cold regions there are no 

 trees, the woody shrubs may be stunted to a finger's length 

 in height, yet the musk-ox thrives on the scanty herbage, 

 and the white bear, among the largest of the bear kind, 

 frequents the shores or seeks its food upon the ice-floes. 

 None of the greater sea-weeds flourishes there, yet the 

 ponderous walrus and more gigantic whale sport amid 

 those icy waters. 



In sunny nooks among the rocks, in Greenland, Alaska, 

 and Siberia alike, there is a profusion of small plants, 

 warmed into life in the long days of the short summer, 

 the beauty of whose flowers delight the beholder. Gor- 

 geous colors abound, and often the large size and bril- 

 liancy of the flowers seem out of all proportion to the 

 size of the stems which support them. I have found some 

 of the same species near the perpetual snows on mountain 

 summits of the Sierra Nevada of California and on the 



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