TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 823 



Basin, includinof the area drained by all rivers flowing; into the Arctic Sea, may be 

 roughly estimated to contain about 14,000,000 square miles, of which half is land 

 and half water. In the coldest part of the basin the land is either glacier or tundra, 

 and in the warmer parts it is either forest or steppe. 

 Greenland, the home of the 



GLACIER. 



and the mother of the icebergs of the Northern Atlantic, rises 9,000 or 10,000 

 feet above sea level, whilst the sea between that lofty plateau and Scandinavia is 

 the deepest known in the Polar Basin, though it is separated from the rest of the 

 Atlantic by a broad belt or submarine plateau connecting Greenland across Iceland 

 and the Faroes with the British Islands and Europe. Iceland, Spitzbergen, and 

 Novaya-Zemlia, the latter a continuation of the Urals, are all mountainous and full 

 of glaciers. The glaciers of Southern Alaska are some of the largest in the world. 

 The glaciers and the icebergs have a literature of their own, and we must pass 

 thein by to say a word or two about 



THE TTTNDEA, 



The Arctic Sea, which lies at the bottom of the Polar Basin, is fringed with a 

 belt of bare country, sometimes steep and rocky, abruptly descending in more or 

 less abrupt cliff's and piles of precipices to the sea, but more often sloping gently 

 down in mud banks and .sand hills representing the accumulated spoils of countless 

 ages of annual floods, which tear up the banks of the rivers and deposit shoals of 

 detritus at their mouths, compelling them to make deltas in their efforts to force a 

 passage to the sea. In Norway this belt of bare country is called the Fjeld, in 

 Russia it is known as the Tundra, and in America its technical name is the Barren 

 Grounds. In the language of science it is the country beyond the limit of forest 

 growth. 



In exposed situations, especially in the higher latitudes, the tundra does really 

 merit its American name of barren ground, being little else than gravel beds 

 interspersed with bare patches of peat or clay, and with scarcely a rush or a sedge to 

 break the monotony. In Siberia at least this is very exceptional. By far the 

 greater part of the tundra, both east and west of the Ural Mountains, is a gently 

 undulating plain, full of lakes, rivers, swamps, and bogs. The lakes are diversified 

 with patches of green water plants, amongst which ducks and swans float and dive ; 

 the little rivers flow between banks of rush and sedge ; the swamps are masses of 

 tall rushes and sedges of various species, where phalaropes and ruffs breed, and the 

 bogs are brilliant with the white fluffy seeds of the cotton grass. The groundwork 

 of all this variegated scenery is more beautiful and varied still — lichens and moss of 

 almost every conceivable colour, from the cream-coloured reindeer moss to the scarlet- 

 cupped trumpet moss, interspersed with a brilliant alpine flora, gentians, anemones, 

 saxifrages, and hundreds of plants, each a picture in itself, the tall aconites, both 

 the blue and yellow species, the beautiful cloudberry, with its gay white blossom 

 and amber fruit, the fragrant Ledum paludre and the delicate "pink Andromeda 

 polifolia. In the sheltered valleys and deep watercourses a few stunted birches, 

 and sometimes large patches of Avillow scrub, survive the long severe winter, and 

 serve as cover for willow grouse or ptarmigan. The Lapland bunting and red- 

 throated pipit are everywhere to be seen, and certain favoured places are the 

 breeding grounds of snipe, plover, and sandpipers of many species. So far 

 from meriting the name of barren ground, the tundra is for the most part ^i 

 veritable paradise in summer. But it has one almost fatal drawback — it swarms 

 with millions of mosquitoes. 



The tundra melts away insensibly into the 



FOEEST, 



but isolated trees are rare, and in Siberia there is an absence of young wood on 

 the confines of the tundra. The limit of forest growth appears to be retiring south- 

 ward, if we may judge from the number of dead and dying stumps but this may 



