THE TUNDRA AND ITS ANIMAL LIFE. 71 



southerner is cheered by the red glory of the willow-herb; the 

 charming wild rose clings close to the motherly earth, decorating 

 it with its slender stems and its flowers; the bright forget-me-not 

 looks up with home -like greeting; here hellebore and chives, 

 valerian and thyme, carnations and blue-bells, bird-vetch and 

 alpine vetch, ranunculus and immortelles, lady's -smock, Jacob's- 

 ladder, cinquefoil, love-lies-bleeding, and others find a home in the 

 desert. In such places more plants grow than one had expected, 

 but the traveller is certainly modest in his expectations when he 

 has seen the same poverty all around for days and weeks together, 

 always dwarf-birches and sallows, marsh andromeda and sedge, 

 reindeer-moss and bog-moss; has refreshed himself with the stunted 

 crowberries and cranberries half-hidden in the moss, half-creeping 

 on the ground, and has been obliged to take the cloudberries which 

 decorate the moss-cushion as flowers; when he has tramped over 

 them and among them for days together always hoping for a 

 change, and always being disappointed. Every familiar plant from 

 the south reminds him of happier regions; he greets it as a dear 

 friend whose value is only realized when he has begun to fear 

 losing him.''' 



It seems strange that the plants above-named and many others 

 should spring only from the dry sand of the dunes, but the apparent 

 riddle is solved when we know that it is only the sand thus piled 

 up, that becomes sufficiently warmed in the months of uninterrupted 

 sunshine for these plants to flourish. Nowhere else throughout the 

 tundra is this the case. Moor and bog, morass and swamp, even 

 the lakes with water several yards in depth only form a thin 

 summer covering over the eternal winter which reigns in the 

 tundra, with destructive as well as with preserving power. Wher- 

 ever one tries to penetrate to any depth in the soil one comes — in 

 most cases scarcely a yard from the surface — ^upon ice, or at least 

 on frozen soil, and it is said that one must dig about a hundred 

 yards before breaking through the ice-crust of the earth. It is this 

 crust which prevents the higher plants from vigorous growth, and 

 allows only such to live as are content with the dry layer of soil 

 which thaws in summer. It is only by digging that one can know 



