304 Sir H. H. Howorth—On the Arctic Lands. 
of what was once richer, and that instead of pointing to the former 
presence of a glacial climate, they point rather to the climate being 
now more severe than it has ever been since this fauna and flora 
occupied the island. 
That the climate of Iceland has been getting more severe was 
long ago suggested by the famous traveller Henderson. Inter alia he 
says: “It is evident, from ancient Icelandic documents, that on 
the arrival of the Norwegians, and for several centuries afterwards, 
pretty extensives forests grew in different parts of the island, and 
furnished the inhabitants with wood both for domestic and nautical 
purposes. Owing, however, to their improvident treatment of them, 
and the increased severity of the climate, they have almost entirely 
disappeared.” 
Elsewhere we read—‘‘In the Middle ages the 8.W. parts of the 
island were covered with forests, and the old sagas report, without 
attributing anything extraordinary to the fact, that the house and 
boat builders went to cut logs in the adjacent forests” (Suarfdvela 
Saga. A. Geffroy, Revue des Deux Mondes, Ist Nov. 1875). <Ollaf- 
sson and Pialsson, who themselves saw a tree 12 metres high, heard 
speak of a ship built of oak which was launched in the Hval Fjordr 
north of Reykjavik, and thence went to Norway. These travellers 
in their travels found numerous iron forges, and it was probably the 
forgers who destroyed the forests” (Reclus IV. 925). 
Mr. Watts in his well-known journey across the Vatna Jokull 
tells us that in passing through woods of birch and willow on the 
banks of the Gravalanda, he noticed that the largest wood was dead. 
The important fact for us to remember is that the trees will no 
longer live there, and are thus in the same position as the pigs, which 
abounded in the Middle Ages, but which are now very scarce. 
The direct evidence again of the glaciers is strongly in favour of 
their growth in recent times and against their having shrunk. ° 
Mr. Watts says: ‘‘ When we inspect the glaciers which fringe the 
south of the Vatna Jékull, we find that they have decidedly advanced ; 
indeed at one point so much so as to almost destroy communication 
along that part of the south shore. Upon the north we find that a 
huge tongue of glacier has flowed down full ten or twelve miles 
beyond the utmost limit assigned to it by Gunlaugson some forty 
years ago, while the route traversed by that enterprizing man is 
completely overrun by the ice, and the traditionary road of the Vatna 
Jokull’s verge is now among the high snows of the Vatna” (Across 
the Vatna Jokull, p. 190). 
True, the glaciers of Iceland may, and no doubt do, ebb and flow, 
but they gain upon the whole, and never would increase to this 
extent were not the annual accumulation vastly in excess of the waste, 
and he goes on to urge that the fact is not peculiar to Iceland but 
has also been noticed in Greenland and Spitzbergen, and says this 
seems to point to something more than a local advance compensated 
for by a retreat in other places. It is too rapid an advance to be 
accounted for by astronomical causes. He goes on to suggest that the 
Gulf Stream may be shifting, and says it is rather a curious fact 
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