356 THE ZOOLOGY OF THE LABRADOR COAST. 



insects, land shells and the vegetation, present an almost 

 purely circumpolar character. Thus certain butterflies 

 and moths first discovered in high latitutes are very 

 abundant about Hopedale and southward, also occuring 

 on the alpine summits of the White mountains and of 

 the Rocky mountains, and certain of them even fre- 

 quenting the Alps of Switzerland, the mountains of 

 Scandinavia and the summits of the Altai mountains in 

 northeastern Asia. 



It is this mingled circumpolar and boreal fauna which 

 composed that assemblage of life-forms, which peopled 

 New England and the extreme northern states,, as well as 

 Canada, during the glacial period, and which as the ice 

 waned, migrating northward, was gradually driven to- 

 wards the north pole, though still lingering on the alpine 

 summits, and on the treeless barrens of Labrador. These 

 bleak, bare tracts, including many thousand square miles 

 of islands lining the Labrador coast, agree in their vege- 

 tation and animal life with similar tracts and islands in 

 latitudes 70° to 80° N. This is due to the cold Labra- 

 dor current, and to the immense fields of floating ice, 

 nearly filling up the channels and friths between these 

 islands throughout the entire short summer of six weeks, 

 thus greatly reducing the temperature, while in Novem- 

 ber the bays and inlets freeze up solid until the following 

 June. 



Indeed the Labrador peninsula with its varied physi- 

 cal features affords admirable examples of the influence 

 of the environment on animal and plant life. The com- 

 plete harmony which exists between the organisms, both 

 terrestrial and marine, and their surroundings, is evidently 

 the result of their adaption to the arctic or the subarctic 



