It should be noted, however, that nowhere does the perpetual snow-line descend to the water’s edge; nowhere has the spell of winter absolutely crushed the life out of all vegetation. Lichens and grasses, on which the reindeer gains its hardy subsistence, are found near lat. 80°; even on the awful plains of Melville Island the snow melts at midsummer; and the deserts of New Siberia afford food for considerable numbers of lemmings. As far as man has reached to the north, says a popular and accurate writer, vegetation, when fostered by a sheltered situation and the refraction of solar heat from the rocks, has everywhere been found to rise to a considerable altitude above the level of the sea; and should there be land at the North Pole, we may reasonably suppose that it is destitute neither of animal nor vegetable life. It would be quite wrong to conclude that the cold of winter invariably increases as we approach the Pole, the temperature of a land being controlled by many other causes besides its latitude. Even in the most northern regions visited by man, the influence of the sea, particularly where favoured by warm currents, considerably mitigates the severity of the winter, while at the same time it diminishes the heat of summer. On the other hand, the large continental tracts of Asia or America that slope towards the Pole, possess a more rigorous winter and a fiercer summer than many coast lands or islands situated far nearer to the Pole. For example: the western shores of Novaia Zemlaia, fronting a wide expanse of sea, have an average winter temperature of only -4°, and a mean summer temperature which rises very little above the freezing-point of water (+ 36° 30’); while Yakutsk, situated in the centre of Siberia, and 20° nearer to the Equator, has a winter temperature of -36° 6’, and a summer of + 66° 6’. But though such are the physical conditions of the Polar Regions, it must not be supposed that Nature wears only a severe and repellent aspect. There is something beautiful in the vast expanse of snowy plain when seen by the light of a cloudless moon; something majestic in the colossal glaciers which fill up the remote Arctic valleys; something picturesque in the numerous icebergs which grandly sail down the dark Polar waters; something mysterious and wonderful in the coruscations of the Aurora, which illuminates the darkness of the winter nights with the glory of the celestial fires. The law of compensation prevails in the far North, as in the glowing and exuberant regions of the Tropics. CHAPTER II. THE ARCTIC HEAVENS: ATMOSPHERIC AND METEORIC PHENOMENA.