134 FORESTRY OF NORWAY. 



spent ten years in Scandinavia, and has chosen the pseudo- 

 nym of An Old Bushman, author of Bush Wanderings in 

 Australia, ' are vast morasses, many of which can never be 

 traversed by the human foot, rivers and inland lakes of 

 every size, fringed with the reed, the bulrush, and the 

 candock, and thousands of acres of low meadow land, 

 covered with thick, coarse grass. It is here that the 

 British naturalist begins to meet with rare and new speci- 

 mens, and it is here that the eye of the traveller first 

 gazes on the fine scenery of the north : and more 

 beautiful scenery than Scandinavia displays during the 

 summer months it would be hard to find. I have wan- 

 dered over many lands, but scarcely ever saw a European 

 landscape to vie with this.' 



In the very far north the appearance of the whole country 

 becomes gradually more wild and rugged, and high moun- 

 tains and barren fells, covered with perennial snows, rise 

 above the limits of vegetation, and tower over the forests 

 which skirt their base. 



The great neves, or snow-fields of Norway, differ from 

 those of the Tyrol and of Switzerland, in that they do not 

 lean upon collossal mountain masses, and naked summits 

 which denominate them. They occupy, on the contrary, 

 the elevated parts of the great rocky plateaux, on the slopes 

 of which they spread out their toothed branches; and in 

 this respect they resemble still the ndves which cover the 

 interior of Greenland. 



Of the snow-line, or that above which the snow lies 

 constantly, Forbes writes : ' The occurrence of perpetual 

 snow at a certain height above the sea, in even the warmest 

 regions of the globe, has in all ages excited the curiosity 

 of geographers and naturalists. Regarded at first as a 

 very simple indication of the depression of temperature 

 as we ascend in the atmosphere, it has been carefully 

 studied and applied (often erroneously) to the determina- 

 tion of climate. Closer examination has shown that the 

 presence of perennial snow, in other words, a predominance 



