56 APPLICATION OF FACTS REGARDING ICE-ACTION. 



wondered at when we consider the capricious and even sporadic 

 distribution of life in the fjords of Greenland. It is possible also, as 

 Lyell suggests, that animal life was originally scarce ; for " we 

 read of the waters being so chilled and freshened by the melting of 

 icebergs in some Norwegian and Icelandic fjords that the fish are 

 driven away and all the mollusca killed." ' He also points out most 

 justly that, as the moraines are at the first devoid of life, if trans- 

 ported by icebergs to a distance, and deposited where the ice 

 melts, they may continue as barren of every indication of life as 

 they were where they originated. That the freshening of the water 

 of fjords does destroy or prevent animal life developing, I have 

 already shown ; but 1 doubt whether the chilling has much, if any, 

 effect ; and the recent researches of Carpenter, Jeffreys, Thomson, 

 and others, show that the idea which was suggested, that the sea 

 might then be too deep for animal life, is without foundation ; for 

 life seems, as far as our present knowledge goes, to have no zero ; 

 besides, the shells found in the glacial formations are not deep-sea 

 shells. Again, we must be careful to avoid concluding that the 

 plant- and animal-life on the dreary shores or mountain-tops of the 

 old glacial Scotland was poor. In Greenland, the outsldrting 

 islands support a luxuriant phanerogamic vegetation of between 

 300 and 400 species of plants; 2 , the sea is full of fishes and inverte- 

 brates, which shelter in forests of Alga3. Plants even ascend to the 

 height of 4000 feet. Millions of seals and whales, and of many 

 species, sport in these waters, or are killed in thousands every 

 spring on the pack-ice or land-floes. Every rock is swarming and 

 noisy with the cries of water-fowl ; reindeer browse in countless 

 herds in some of the valleys ; the Arctic fox barks its hue ! htic ! 

 from the dreariest rocks in the depth of winter ; and the polar 

 bear is on the range all the year round. Land-birds from southern 

 regions come here for a nesting-place, 8 and from the snowy valleys 

 the Greenlanders will bring in the depth of winter sledge-loads of 

 ptarmigan into the Danish posts. Life is so abundant that the 

 Danish Government find it profitable to keep up trading-posts 

 there, and the collecting and preserving of the skins, oil, and 

 ivory of the native animals afford profitable employment to a con- 

 siderable population. Independently of the fish eaten, the seals 



Lyell's 'Antiquity of Man,' p. 268. 



2 The present writer, in little more than two months, amid many other occu- 

 pations, collected on the shores and in the vicinity of Disco Bay alone, 129 species 

 of flowering plants and vascular cryptogams, more than 40 mosses, 11 Hepaticse, 

 more than 100 Lichens, including many new species, about 50 Algse, and several 

 Fungi (see ' Transactions of the Edinburgh Botanical Society,' vol. ix.). 



3 About 115 species of birds are found in Greenland. 



