FLORA. 157 
ascending heights in these climates. The vegetation with 
which we are familiar in the valleys gradually disappears 
under our feet. The Scotch fir soon leaves us; then the 
birches become shrivelled; now they wholly disappear ; 
and between the bushes of mountain willows and dwarf 
birches, the innumerable clusters of berry-bearing herbs 
have room to spread—blae-berries on the dry heights, and 
mountain brambles on the marshy ground. We at last 
rise above them; the blae-berries no longer bear; they 
appear singly, with few leaves, and no longer in a bushy 
form. At last they disappear, and they are soon followed 
by the mountain willows. The dwarf birch alone braves 
the height and the cold; but at last it also yields before 
reaching the limit of perpetual snow ; and there is a broad 
border before reaching this limit, on which, beside mosses, 
a few plants only subsist with great difficulty. Mven the 
reindeer moss, which rises in the woods with the blae- 
berry in luxuriance of growth, is very unfrequent on such 
heights. On the top of the mountains, which is almost a 
table-land, there is no ice, it is true, nor glaciers; but the 
snow never leaves these heights; and a few single points 
and spots above the level are alone clear of snow for a few 
weeks. It is a melancholy prospect; nothing in life is 
_ any longer to be seen, except perhaps occasionally an eagle 
in his flight over the mountains from one fiord to another.’ 
On Akka Solki, one of these mountains on the western 
coast, which is about 3392 English feet in height, the fol- 
lowing limits of the different productions were accurately 
marked :— 
Eng, Feet. 
Limit of snow in latitude 70°, . ‘ fi ’ . 3514 
Betula. nana, or dwarf birch, F . 2742 
Salix myrsinitis, or whortle-leaved willow, . 7 = 2150 
Salix lanata, or downy willow, rises above the Betula 
nana, and approaches the limit of perpetual snow. 
Vaccinium myrtillus, or blae-berry. . B é ‘ 2031 
Betula alba, or birch tree, . F i ‘ 5 : 1579 
We should find following each other in the same order, 
but in broader zones, in the tropical, sub-tropical, temper- 
