wasting away leaves the limestone layers standing like walls between them—a thing which, in a small scale, may often be elsewhere observed. If a glance at these buried fossils awakens in us an image, as in a dream, of a creation rich in organic forms, a glance at the present state of the Barentz Isles impresses us with the gloomiest feelings. 10. “Before us lies this small greyish brown fragment of the earth. The cold, level ground is covered with sharp-edged pieces of rock, which appear to be as it were macadamised, so closely are they rammed together. Here and there, about a fathom’s length from each other, lie brownish green masses like mole-hills. When we examine them more closely, each mass resolves itself into a vast number of small plants of the same species (_Saxifraga oppositifolia_), whose little stalks are covered with dark green leaves, which are alive, and also with brown leaves, which have been dead for years and years, but wither in the cold much more gradually than with us. From this small heap, tender rosy blooms raise their little heads, bidding defiance to the bitter snowy weather which sweeps over the miserable plain. Another species of saxifrage (_Saxifraga cœspitosa_), with shorter stalks and yellowish-white flowers, growing in thick clumps, forms, together with the first-named variety and the more rarely appearing _Saxifraga rivularis_, the hardiest representatives of this family of plants so frequently found in the Polar regions. If to these we add _Draba arctica_ with its little yellow flowers, forming in valleys large patches of sward, the yellow flowering poppy (_Papaver nudicaule_), and a rare willow (_Salix polaris_), which with some few leaves peeps forth from the soil, we have described the whole Flora of that desolate waste, in which a mere passing glance would scarce detect the existence of vegetable life among the débris of rocks and the heaps of snow. Mosses are found here and there in the moister fissures of rocks, and especially on the coast, where old drift-wood, or the bones of whales or other animals, afford the nourishment they need, and in some places the mosses spread themselves out into small carpets. Lichens love to shelter under the clusters of the different kinds of saxifrage, though sometimes they are found by themselves. Of this class we will mention merely the so-called Iceland moss (_Cetraria islandica_), and a reindeer lichen (_Cladonia pyxidata_); the few other forms are nearly related to those mentioned, and belong to the so-called creeping lichens. One peculiarity of the Flora of the far north, which we have already mentioned, is their growth in clumps. Only thus can these tender organisms maintain their existence against the stern elements; and this indeed is a characteristic of all Arctic creation, which is seen in the animal world also, when its means of nourishment are hard to find. We will point only to the herds of reindeer, of lemmings, of walruses, of