178 , FLORA AND FAUNA OF NOETH GREENLAND. 



covered with soft moss, and numerous wild flowers, besides dwarf 

 willow. The flora of this land consists of forty-four genera and 

 seventy -six species as yet discovered, among which there are four 

 kinds of ranunculus, fourteen crucifers, including three kinds of 

 scurvy grass, several pretty little stellarias, potentillas, and saxi- 

 frages, seven of the heath trihe, a dwarf willow, a fern (Cysto- 

 pteris), and numerous mosses and grasses. Dr. Donne t speaks of 

 the fertile valleys of Wolstenholine Sound, covered with moss, 

 over which, as he walked, he felt as if Persia had sent her softest 

 material to give comfort to the "Arctic Highlander." It is fair to 

 add that he wrote this sentence when frozen in off the more 

 barren shores of Griffith Island. 



But it is on the condition of the sea, much more than of the 

 land, that the suitability of a region for human habitation depends 

 within the Arctic Zone ; and although Greenland is infinitely richer 

 in vegetation, and abounds more in animal life, than the dreary 

 archipelago to the westward, yet without open water in the 

 winter it would be uninhabitable. The ice drifting south in the 

 spring leaves a large extent of navigable sea at the head of Baf- 

 fin's Bay during the summer — known as the "North "Water"; 

 while the currents and the innumerable icebergs, always in mo- 

 tion and ploughing up the floes, keep up open pools and lanes 

 of water throughout the winter. 



Such is the country which supports a multitude of living creatures, 

 in a temperature where the mean of the warmest month is -f- 38, and 

 of the coldest — 38, in a climate where there are furious gales of wind, 

 where the year is divided into one long day and one long night, but 

 where, in the glorious summer, in the calm and silent sunny nights, 

 may be seen some of the most lovely scenery on this earth. No lich 

 woodland tints, little diversity of colouring; all its beauty dependent 

 upon ice and water, and beetling crags, and strange atmospheric 

 effects, but still most beautiful. The land between the shore and 

 the glacier is the abode of reindeer, bears, foxes, and hares ; of ravens, 

 falcons, owls, ptarmigan, willow-grouse, snow-bunting, dotterels, 

 and phalaropes; while the aquatic birds come in tens of thousands 

 to breed on the crags and islands — king ducks, eider ducks, long- 

 tailed ducks, and brent geese ; looms, dovekeys, and rotches in 

 millions; skuas, ivory and silver gulls ; burgomasters, mullemukkes, 

 kittiwakes, and Arctic terns. Above all, so far as man's existence 

 is concerned, the open pools and lanes of water are crowded with 

 seals (hispid and bearded), walrus, white whales, and narwhals, 

 and these again betoken the existence of fish, molluscs, and minute 

 marine creatures in myriads. 



