76 A SUMMER IN GREENLAND 
of a freshly broken slab of stone and allow the facts 
discovered to stimulate the imagination, the ice 
and snow disappear, the scrubby Willows and 
Dwarf Birch are changed into a forest of trees of 
many sorts, and luxuriant thickets of scrambling 
ferns replace the stunted heaths; Arctic Greenland 
is transformed into a tropical scene recalled from 
the past?. Similarly, pursuing the idea of contrasts 
and shifting our ground to a gravel pit in England, 
the discovery in a layer of peat, belonging to a 
geological period separated by thousands rather 
than millions of years from the present, of frag- 
mentary though well preserved plants, many of 
which are identical with species still living on the 
ice-free fringe of Greenland, changes the familiar 
landscape into that of an Arctic land: these samples 
of a bygone flora? tell us that when England was 
under the influence of the Glacial period it was as 
Greenland is. 
In Greenland the collector of fossils digs out of the 
rocks plants which he has gatheredin the Tropics or 
species next of kin to them; in layers of peat among 
the deposits of lakes and rivers found among the 
Glacial gravels of England he sees again the flora 
of Greenland. 
1 An interesting summary of the evidence of climatic changes 
afforded by Arctic fossil plants was contributed by Dr Nathorst 
to the International Geological Congress of 1910: a translation of 
this by the late Dr Arber was published in the Geological Magazine, 
VII, 217, IQIT. 
2 For details see ‘The Arctic Flora of the Cam Valley,’ by 
Miss M. E. J. Chandler, Quarterly Fournal of the Geological 
Society, LXXVII, 4, 1921. 
