52 



THE PAEADISE OF THE CHAEADRIID^:. 



Arctic 

 breeding- 

 grounds. 



Their 

 appearance 

 in winter. 



Continuous 

 day in 

 midwinter. 



The feldts of Lapland, the tundras of Siberia, and the barren grounds of Canada, in 

 fact the fur-countries of the two hemispheres, are the paradise of the Charadriidse, and as 

 such require some description. They may roughly be characterized as the shores of the 

 Polar Basin, bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean, and on the south by the northern 

 limit of forest-growth. I have endeavoured to point out the vicissitudes to which 

 these districts have been subjected during the last million years, which may be regarded as 

 typical of the changes which they now annually undergo, and which I propose briefly to 

 describe in this chapter. 



I have called this district a paradise, and so it is for two or three months of the year. 

 Nowhere else in the whole world can you find such an abundance of animal and vegetable 

 life, brilliant flowers, birds both gay of plumage and melodious of song, where perpetual 

 day smiles on sea and river and lake. For the rest of the year I admit that it is dreary, 

 almost, but not quite, as depressing as a South-African karroo. For eight months or more 

 (according to the latitude) every trace of vegetable life is completely hidden under a thick 

 blanket, which absolutely covers every plant and bush : far as the eye can reach in 

 every direction nothing is to be seen but an interminable undulating plain of white snow. 



During six months of this time 

 animal life is only traceable by 

 the footprints of a reindeer or 

 a fox in the snow, or by the 

 rare visit of a raven or of a 

 snowy owl which may have 

 wandered beyond the limit of 

 forest-growth whither it had 

 retired for the winter. For a 

 couple of months in midwinter 

 the sun never rises above the horizon, and the white snow looks 

 grey in the fitful light of the moon, the stars, or the aurora 

 borealis. Early in February the sun just peeps upon the scene for 

 a few minutes at noon and then retires. Day by day he prolongs 

 his visit, until February, March, April, and May have passed, and continuous night has 

 become continuous clay. At midday the sun's rays are hot enough to blister the skin, but 

 they glance harmless from the white snow, and for a few days the extraordinary anomaly 

 presents itself of continuous day in midwinter. 



But if it were possible to obtain a bird's-eye view of the Arctic ice and snow from the 

 North Pole, a still more extraordinary phenomenon would be visible. The disk of snow 

 surrounding the North Pole at the end of May extends for about two thousand miles in 

 every direction where land exists, and is melting away on its circumference at the rate of 

 about four miles an hour. The snow is six feet deep, and as it takes a week or more to 

 melt, it is in process of being melted for a belt of several hundred miles round the 



