46 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCK LAND. 
[CH. IT. 
powder washed down into the hollows of the snow. It 
has been suggested that the colouring matter may be 
derived from the lichen Tartareus (Roccella or Orchill of 
commerce), which is imported largely from Corsica and 
Sardinia for the use of dyers ; but as this plant must be 
steeped in a solution of ammonia to extract its red colour, 
and is not likely to meet that substance on the high Alps, 
we must refer the colour to the same source as in Baffin’s 
Bay. I believe the colour obtained from this lichen is 
called Cudbear, and enclose a specimen of it for Miss Jane, 
which comes from Scotland ; it is most luxuriant on granite 
rocks. I must request her indulgence for all the errors 
I may have made touching the history of this lichen, and 
shall hope to be corrected where I am wrong. My friend 
Mr. Duncan has another theory more pretty than any of 
the rest, if it were but true, and which he has committed to 
verse as follows :— 
“ ‘ Of yore ’tis said a heavenly red 
The cheeks of modest maids o’erspread : 
Some say with innocence it fled— 
But where it went no man could know; 
The truth our modern travellers show— 
It went to dye the Arctic snow/ 
“ The natives of this poetically coloured region, says Sir 
Dudley Digges, have harpoons and knives made of iron 
beat flat between two stones. This iron no doubt fell 
from the clouds, like the mass of native iron found by 
Pallas in Siberia ; and it is only in such cases that 
malleable iron has been found native, being always 
accompanied by nickel. That used in the harpoons has 
three-hundreds of nickel ; a small knife has been made in 
London from twenty-six grains of it. Captain Ross could 
not make out the size of the block from which the natives 
obtained it, nor its position ; but it is beyond doubt 
meteoric. 1 
“ Blocks of fir and fragments of ships are drifted occasion- 
1 Baron Nordenskiold has proved that this is native and not meteoric 
