76 ON THE BOTANY OF THE BRITISH POLAR EXPEDITION. 



slate, with true cleavage ; near the mouth of this fiord masses of 

 hematite appear, and a few miles up there are beds of a hard pale 

 unfossiliferous limestone, which is of rare occurrence. Drifted 

 foreign and sometimes fossiliferous rocks, rounded boulders, ice- 

 scrapings, and other evidences of glacial action are to be met with 

 in many places at high elevations (1000 feet and upwards) above 

 the old sea shores; on the summit of Mount Cartmel (1800 feet), 

 the slaty shingle is grooved and fluted in unmistakable fashion, 

 and the last condition of this land, while its lower parts were 

 beneath the sea, was evidently the same as the present ice-capped, 

 glacier-forming era of the opposite continent of Greenland. 



The following notices of the arrival of summer may be 

 interesting : — 



In 1876 the sun was above the horizon on February 26th ; 

 on May 10th, ptarmigan had begun to get summer colours ; on 

 May 14th, at Polaris Bay, leaf- shoots of Saxifraga oppositifolia put 

 forth young leaves, the thermometer standing at 9° F. ; snow 

 buntiugs arrived at Polaris Bay on the 15th of May; the first 

 trickle of water upon a black rock-surface was seen upon May 16th; 

 on the 27th of May, shoots of Stellaria longipes were in growth ; on 

 the 29th, flies made their appearance; June 7th, Saxifraga 

 oppositifolia was first seen in flower, and a day or two afterwards 

 Draba parviflora came into blow ; June 13th was the first warm 

 summer's day of the year. 



Besides the difficulties due to the climate, there are others in 

 the way of plant-growth ; lemmings swarm here, and subsist 

 entirely on vegetable matter, which is also the support of numbers 

 of hares, musk oxen, ptarmigan, and brent geese. Individuals of 

 these watched or dissected by me led to the following conclusions : 

 the musk ox will eat almost any herbage, but seemed especially 

 fond of Carex fuliginosa and Salix arctica ; the brent goose prefers 

 shoots and heads of lianunrulus nivalis, Eriophorum capitation, and 

 Cerastium alpinum ; Saxifraga caspitosa was the favourite food of 



hares, everything else was rejected by a leveret which I kept in 



confinement ; ptarmigans appear to subsist entirely upon willow 



tops (Salix arctica) ; the reindeer will reject everything for Stellaria 



longipes, while the seed tops of Drabas and Poppies form the chief 



food of the snow bunting; Saxifraga oppositifolia and Drabas 



support hosts of lemmings, and the former is no doubt eaten by 



all in the early part of the season, being the first to form fresh 

 growth. 



The tufts, shoots, and stems of many arctic plants, especially 

 Scuitraga oppositifolia, S. caspitosa, and several Drabas become to 

 all appearances dead at the close of the season, but next summer 

 bu< start forth at the apex and axils of these stems to form fresh 

 tiov ring branches; this is commonly the case, the vigour becomes 

 quiescent, frozen as it were, and the plants do not shed their 

 withered sprays ; hence it is usual to find dense clusters of old 

 leaves and branches attached to a plant, as in Drgas integrifolia 

 and Saxifraga trirmphlata, etc. Many years leaves may be 

 found on one sample of Saxifraga oppositifolia or Festuca ovina; 



