168 THE FOREST LANDS OF NORTHERN RUSSIA. 



sation of hunger until \ve got to sleep ; but it was found 

 to produce afterwards a painful diarrhoea. Besides this 

 unpleasant effect, fragments of gravel, which were mixed 

 with the mosses, tried our teeth. We picked the plants 

 from the rock with our knives, or a piece of hoop-iron ; 

 and we could not avoid breaking of some particles of the 

 stone." 



' These lichens are black and leather-like, studded with 

 small black points like " coiled wire buttons," and attached 

 either by an umbilical root or by short and tenacious 

 fibres to the rocks. Some of them may be compared to a 

 piece of shagreen, while others resemble a fragment of 

 burned skin. They are met with in cold bleak localities, 

 on Alpine heights of granite or micaceous schist, in almost 

 all parts of the world, on the Scottish mountains, on the 

 Andes, on the Himalayas ; but it is in the Polar world 

 that they most abound, spreading over the surface of 

 every rock a sombre Plutonian vegetation, that seems to 

 have been scathed by fire and flame, until all its beauty 

 and richness were shrivelled up.' 



In Sweden, while several of the lichens produced in 

 these regions are employed as dyes, others are used as 

 medicine, and some as poisons for noxi6us and dangerous 

 animals which are found annoying. 



' The only lichen which has retained its place in modern 

 pharmacy is the well-known "Iceland moss." It is still 

 employed as a tonic and febrifuge in ague ; but more 

 largely, when added to soups and chocolate, as an article 

 of diet for the feeble and consumptive. In Iceland the 

 Cetraria Islandica is highly valued by the inhabitants. 

 What barley, rye, and oats are to the Indo-Caucasian races 

 of Asia and Western Europe ; the olive, the fig, and the 

 grape to the inhabitants of the Mediterranean basin ; rice 

 to the Hindu ; the tea-plant to the native of the Flowery 

 Land ; and the date-palm to the Arab, is Iceland moss 

 to the Icelander, the Lapp, and the Eskimo. 



It is found on some of the loftiest peaks of the Scottish 



