A SUBTROPICAL GREENLAND 31 
Thomas Hardy in The Return of the Native 
speaks of Clym Yeobright walking alone on the 
heath ‘when the past seized upon him with its 
shadowy hand, and held him there to listen to its 
tale. His imagination would then people the spot 
with its ancient inhabitants.’ Similarly the waifs 
and strays from the vegetations of the past enable 
us with a certain degree of accuracy to reclothe the 
hills with plants of other days and other climes. 
It is impossible with precision to interpret in 
degrees of temperature what the buried leaves and 
twigs indicate; but we may safely say that they 
belong to plants which could not have existed 
under conditions comparable to those endured by 
the present Arctic vegetation. One of the most 
convincing and impressive arguments in support 
of the prevalence of an almost, if not quite, tropical 
climate in Greenland during the Cretaceous epoch 
is furnished by portions of large leaves and pieces 
of the fruit of a Breadfruit tree discovered by 
members of a Swedish expedition in 1883 on the 
coast of Disko Island and described by the late 
Professor Nathorst, who was well known as an 
Arctic explorer and an exceptionally able student 
of the floras of the past. The Breadfruit, Avtocarpus 
incisa, which the Greenland fossil closely resembles, 
is cultivated practically all over the tropics and is 
native in some of the Pacific Islands. The fossil 
Artocarpus was found at Ujaragsugssuk (Map B, 
U), on the shores of the Vaigat, a place at which 
we failed to find any good specimens of fossil 
plants. It is interesting to note that species of 
