THE FLORA OF RUSSIAN LAPLAND. 
1G3 
Geranium sylvaticum was common enough, but was hardly in 
flower, and the same with Ganlamine prate uni at the time ol' our 
visit, whilst Caltha paiustris brightened the rivulets with a border 
of yellow, as did Ranunculus acris on the drier knolls. 
On ascending to tho uplands from the valley of the Ukanskoe 
river, a height of 300 feet or so, we see stretching around us 
not an absolutely flat country, hut a sombre, grey, monotonous, 
dreary expanse of ice-worn land. There are undulations and 
swellings, the former in many places occupied by lakes and tarns, 
and by broad surfaces of Lichen-covered peat, with patches of 
Eriophoruan. We find in some places still deeper hollows 
concealing lakes or fair-sized sheets of water, and around these are 
grouped Birch woods, and the same may be seen in a few 
sheltered dells ; but as the eye travels far and wide over this 
sad-looking land, these favoured localities are generally hidden from 
view, and the grey slopes and ice-abraded surfaces predominate. 
The entire country is covered with erratic boulders, all clad in 
shaggy coats of Lichen-growth. 
These boulders are spread far and wide in countless thousands, 
scattered over tho tops of the rounded eminences, which do not 
rise higher than 500 to 600 feet. They accumulate in far greater 
numbers in the hollows and undulations of the rock surface. It is 
difficult to walk over them, as progression is a series of leaps and 
bounds, with the danger of falling into the yawning gaps between 
the boulders. Some of them are of great size, and in places they 
take most singular positions. One can easily conjure up the 
impression that you see around, altars and monoliths, and the work 
of some departed race of Titans, and this adds to the weird feeling 
of a solitary ramble in that dreary land. 
The result, however, is that one learns from these surroundings 
a most important lesson in glacial geology. We are standing on 
a surface that has once been covered with an ice-sheet, and as 
the area of Russian Lapland has been planed down to a very 
general level, on the melting and recession of the superincumbent 
ice, its contained erratics have sunk to the level of the land on 
which it rested. The greater accumulation of the boulders in 
the undulations would probably arise from the retreating and 
melting ice-sheet drifting them into the depressions and troughs of 
