16 THE TUNDRA AND ITS FAUNA 



dies away into forest. The result is that the continental 

 tundra forms a band of very varying width. The mild- 

 ness of the Western European climate pushes the tree 

 limit up within the Arctic Circle, and reduces the tundra 

 zone to a narrow band to the north of Scandinavia. 

 Thence it extends through European Russia into 

 Siberia, and reappears again at the other side of the 

 Bering Strait to extend across Arctic America. Here 

 to the east it revenges itself for its conquest by the 

 forest in Western Europe by pushing the forest zone 

 far to the south, so that a band of tundra extends 

 down the coast-line of Labrador, and even into New- 

 foundland. 



The northern limit of the continental tundra is the 

 polar sea, but the tundra type reappears on the margin 

 of the land-masses lying within that sea. The islands 

 of the American archipelago, Baffin Land, Greenland, 

 the northern shore of Iceland, Spitsbergen, Franz 

 Josef Land, Nova Zembla, the New Siberian Islands, 

 &c., are all fringed by a band of tundra. Its northern 

 extension may indeed be gathered from the fact that 

 the reindeer, one of the most characteristic tundra 

 animals, was hunted by the Sverdrup expedition in 

 King Oscar Land, which extends to about 80° 30' 

 N. lat. In these regions the sea again forms one of the 

 boundaries of the tundra zone. The other boundary is 

 formed by the presence of eternal ice and snow. Gener- 

 ally it may be said that tundra occurs wherever the 

 melting of the snow is sufficient to expose a surface 

 upon which land plants may grow. 



The climate throughout this great area naturally 

 varies, but the special features are the following. 

 Nowhere does the mean temperature of the warmest 

 month exceed 50° F., and it is often much below this. 



