FLORA. 173 



'We noticed,' he says/about one hundred and seventy phaner- 

 ogamous or flowering plants ; being one-fifth of the num- 

 ber of species which exist fifteen degrees of latitude 

 further to the southward. He adds : The grasses, bents, 

 and rushes, constitute only one-fifth of the species on the 

 coast, but the two former tribes actually cover more 

 ground than all the rest of the vegetation. The cruciferae, 

 or cross-like tribe, afford one-seventh of the species, and the 

 compound flowers are nearly as numerous. The shrubby 

 plants that reach the sea-coast are the common juniper, 

 two species of willow, the dwarf birch, the common alder, 

 the hippophae, the gooseberry, the red bear berry (arbutus 

 uva tim'), the Labrador tea-plant, the Lapland rose, the 

 bog-whortleberry, and the crowberry. The kidney-leaved 

 oxyria grows in great abundance there, and occasionally 

 furnished us with an agreeable addition to our meals, as it 

 resembles the garden-sorrel in flavour, but is more juicy 

 and tender. It is eaten by the natives, and must, as well 

 as many of the cress-like plants, prove an excellent correc- 

 tive of the gross, oily, rancid, and frequently putrid meat 

 on which they subsist. The small balls of the Alpine bis- 

 tort, and the long, succulent, and sweet roots of many of 

 the astragaleaB, which grow on the sandy shores, are eat- 

 able ; but it does not seem that the Eskimos are acquainted 

 with their use. A few clumps of white spruce-fir, with 

 some straggling black spruces and canoe-birches, grow at 

 the distance of twenty or thirty miles from the sea, in 

 sheltered situations on the banks of rivers. 



' It has been pointed out that the principal characteristic 

 of the vegetation of the Arctic regions is the predomin- 

 ance of perennial and cryptogamous plants; but further 

 southward, where night begins to alternate with day, or 

 in what may be called the sub-arctic zone, a difference of 

 species appears which greatly enhances the beauty of the 

 landscape. A richly and vividly-coloured flora adorns 

 these latitudes in Europe as well as in Asia during their 

 brief but ardent summer, with its intense radiance and 



