552 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



covering of itself a large extent of country, and constituting the principal support of the 

 animal after which it is called, and upon that animal the Laplander entirely depends for 

 his own subsistence. The scurvy grass and sorrel, so valuable for their antiscorbutic 

 qualities, nourish likewise under the almost perpetual snows ; and during the short summer 

 which the arctic fields enjoy, some low flowering herbs, the saxifrage, primrose, ranunculus, 

 anemone, and yellow poppy, display their tints upon the sites which have a southern 

 aspect. In receding from the pole, the first specimens of the higher classes of vegetation 

 encountered are a few shrubs of wild thyme, and a species of willow expanding itself late- 

 rally to the extent of several feet, yet never rising more than two or three inches from 

 the ground, showing the ungenial influence of the climate. Next comes the " lady of the 

 woods," the birch, but shorn of her fair proportions a mere dwarf along with various 

 kinds of bushes yielding edible fruit of delicious flavour, as the cloud-berry and arctic 

 bramble. The latter grows in the wildest and most exposed districts of Lapland. It 

 sometimes offered to Linnaeus the only food he could obtain during his perilous journey 

 in that dreary region ; and hence, the reference made to it in his work : "I should be 

 ungrateful towards this beneficent plant, which often, when I was almost prostrate with 

 hunger and fatigue, restored me with the vinous nectar of its berries, did I not bestow on 

 it a full description." At the island of Hammerfest, near the North Cape 'of Europe, in 

 latitude 70 40', the birch grows in sheltered hollows between the mountains, attaining 

 to about the human height ; and in the low branches which creep along the ground the 

 ptarmigan finds a summer retreat, and breeds in security. The only other trees of any 

 importance, that can maintain an existence within the arctic circle, are some of the pine 

 species, the Scotch and spruce fir, which in Norway pass a short distance beyond its con- 

 fine, but chiefly the former. Barley is cultivated in this zone as high as latitude 70 ; but 

 it requires a favourable aspect and season in order to be ripened, for there is little more 

 than three months between the loosening of the frozen ground and its being again bound 

 up. Wahlenberg states, that the cultivation of this grain succeeds wherever the mean 

 temperature during ninety days rises to 48. At Enontekeis, in Lapland, barley and 

 turnips yielded nine good crops in the thirty years between 1800 and 1830. The pre- 

 ceding remarks apply to the arctic regions of Europe, which have a less severe climate 

 than those of Asia and America, and, consequently, a more copious vegetation, scanty as 

 it is. 



Referring to the temperate zone, we find the pine tribe luxuriant at its northern con- 

 fine, forming the magnificent forests of Scandinavia, where the spruce fir grows perfectly 

 straight, sometimes to the height of two hundred feet. Hence the Germanic name of 

 this tribe, nadel-holz needle-wood ; and Milton's illustration in the splendid description 

 of Satan, 



" His spear, to equal which the tallest pine 



Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast 



Of some great ammiral, were but a wand." 



The pines occur in much more extensive forests, and with less admixture, than any other 

 genus of timber-trees, immense districts in North America being covered with them ; 

 but they do not reach to such high parallels of latitude there, or in Asia, as in Europe. 

 The Norwegian pine is, however, far exceeded by a transatlantic species, Pinus Lam- 

 bertiana, growing singly on the plains to the west of the Rocky Mountains. Several 

 have been measured, and found to be 250 feet high, 60 feet in circumference at the base, 

 4J feet in circumference at the height of 190 feet, yielding cones 11 inches round, and 

 from one foot to 16 inches long, a transverse section of the trunk showing 900 annual 

 rings. In descending into the temperate zone, we meet with the alder, aspen, and moun- 

 tain ash. We then come to the extreme northern boundary of the oak, in latitude 63, 



