136 



THE VEGETATION OF SPITZBEHGE^sT COMPAEED WITH THAT 



OF THE ALPS AND PYREiTEES. 



By Chas. Martins. 

 Prof, of Natural History, and Director of the ' ' Jardin des Plantes, " cfcc, , at 



Montpellier. 



( Continued from page 106.) 



All tlie valleys, botli in the ISTortli and South, of Spitzhergen, are filled by 

 glaciers, which descend to the sea-line. Their length is variable ; the longest I 

 have seen, that of Bell Sound, being 18 kilometres (59,000 feet,) long, by 

 6 kilometres (19,684 feet) wide ; and that in Magdalena Bay 1,840 metres 

 (6,036 feet) long by 1580 metres (5,181 feet) wide at its sea-edge. 

 According to Scoresby the two largest glaciers are those of the South Cape, 

 and another at the north of Horn Sound, which are both 20 kilometres 

 (12 miles) wide, at their sea-edge, and of unknown length. The seven gla- 

 ciers which border the coast to the north of Prince Charles' Island, are 

 each nearly 4 kilometres (13,123 feet) wide. All these glaciers form at 

 their inferior extremities great walls or escarpments of ice, of a vertical 

 height varying from 30 to 120 metres (90 to 400 feet). The earlier 

 Dutch and English navigators seeing these colossal walls of ice, higher than 

 the masts of their vessels, described them as icebergs, not suspecting their 

 analogy with the glaciers of the interior of the continent ; the name still 

 remains ; and Phipps, Parry, and Scoresby himself were ignorant of the nature 

 of these ice rivers, rolling away in billows under their eyes. When I ap- 

 proached Spitzbergen for the first time, in 1858, I immediately recognised 

 the glaciers I had so often admired in Switzerland. Their origin is the same^ 

 the difference being owing to the climate, the neighbourhood of the sea, and 

 the lower elevation of the mountains of Spitzbergen. 



There are neither rivers nor rivulets in Spitzbergen, as the glaciers 

 descend to the sea-level. A feeble streamlet sometimes, escapes from the 

 flanks of the glacier, but it is speedily arrested. Springs are also unknown' 

 as the soil is always frozen hard at a depth of some few inches. 



