154 



THE WORLD OF LIFE 



" It is incredible how rapidly the transformation is completed. 

 Twelve hours after the snow had melted the wood-anemone was in 

 flower, and twenty-four hours after the yellow flowers of the marsh- 

 marigold opened. In a short time the country looked like an 

 English garden run wild. On the Arctic Circle wild onions, wild 

 rhubarb, pansies, Jacob's ladder, purple anemones, dwarf roses, and 

 a hundred other flowers made the country quite gay ; whilst on the 

 tundras wild-fruits of various kinds — crowberry, cranberry, cloud- 

 berry, arctic strawberry — were blended with reindeer-moss and 



Fig. 19. — Sudden Arrival of Birds in the Arctic Regions at the End of May. 



other lichens, together with the most characteristic flowers of an 

 Alpine flora — gentians, saxifrages, forget-me-nots, pinks, monks- 

 hoods (both blue and yellow), and sheets of the Silene acauUs, 

 with its deep-red flowers. The Alpine rhododendron was replaced 

 by a somewhat similar shrub. Ledum palustre; but the flora, on 

 the whole, was like that of the Engadine brought down to the level 

 of the sea. 



" Although the first rush of migratory birds across the Arctic 

 Circle was almost bewildering, every piece of open water and every 

 patch of bare ground swarming with them, a new species on an 

 average arriving every two hours for several days, the period of 



