192 THE FOREST LANDS OF NORTHREN RUSSIA. 



berries, crowberries, juniper-berries, bilberries, and the 

 Norwegian mulberry, which grows upon a creeping plant, 

 and is greatly esteemed as an antiscorbutic.* In the 

 gardens towards the south are raised cresses, spinach, 

 onions, leeks, chives, orache, red cabbage, radishes, mus- 

 tard ; currants, barberries, elder-berry; wild -rose, colum- 

 bines, rose-campions, carnations, sweet-williams ; potatoes 

 about the size of poppy-heads ; French beans, broad beans, 

 and tobacco when carefully managed ; but neither white 

 cabbage nor pease come to any perfection; and apples, 

 pears, plums, and cherries scarcely grow at all, though cul- 

 tivated with the greatest attention. The most abundant 

 native vegetables are sorrel, which is of great service on 

 account of its antiscorbutic properties ; angelica, which is 

 highly relished as an article of food ; and the lichen rangi- 

 ferinus, which furnishes the chief subsistence of the rein- 

 deer during winter, and which the Laplanders frequently 

 boil in broth for their own use. Of the indigenous fruits, 

 the most delicious is the berry of the rubus articus ; which, 

 when sufficiently ripened, is said to be superior in fragrance 

 and flavour to the finest raspberries or strawberries. A 

 small plateful fills an apartment with a more exquisite 

 scent than the finest perfumes ; and it is preserved in 

 Sweden as one of the finest sweetmeats.' 



On the tundra, land between the forest zone and the sea 

 we find where the soil is pretty dry that lichens abound ;, 

 on moister land these are varied with the Iceland moss, 

 and in the southern stretches this is succeeded by grasses, 

 cruciters, saxifrages, carophyls, and compositae and marsh 

 plants varying the scene, but it is a dreary waste. 



In Swedish Lapland there ripen rye, barley, the rasp- 

 berry, the strawberry, the red gooseberry, the cowberry, 

 and whortleberry, and the delicious Arctic bramble (Rubus 

 ttrcticus) ; but neither fruit trees, wheat, or pease come to 

 maturity. 



* The plants on the western part of Lapland, towards the sea, are analogous to those 

 of Scotland and Iceland; while the most abundant productions of Swedish Lapland 

 more nearly resemble those of Siberia. 



