The rocky west coast of Nova Zembla has about the same appearance as the analogous part of Spitzbergen, for here also the mountains, particularly in the northern island, rise abruptly to a height of three or four thousand feet from the sea, while the eastern coast is generally flat. In both countries, angular blocks of stone, precipitated from the summits, cover the sides of the hills, and frequently make it impossible to ascend them. In fact, no rock, however hard or finely grained, is able to withstand the effects of a climate where the summer is so wet and the winter so severe. Nowhere in Nova Zembla is a grass-covered spot to be found deserving the name of a meadow. Even the foliaceous lichens, which grow so luxuriantly in Lapland, have here a stunted appearance; but, as Von Baer remarks, this is owing less to the climate than to the nature of the soil, as plants of this description thrive best on chalky ground. The crustaceous lichens, however, cover the blocks of augite and porphyry with a motley vesture, and the dingy carpet with which _Dryas octopetala_ invests here and there the dry slopes, formed of rocky detritus, reminds one of the tundras of Lapland. The scanty vegetable covering which this only true social plant of Nova Zembla affords is, however, but an inch thick, and can easily be detached like a cap from the rock beneath. On a clayey ground in moist and low situations, the mosses afford a protection to the polar willow (_Salix polaris_), which raises but two leaves and a catkin over the surface of its covering. Even the most sparing sheet of humus has great difficulty to form in Nova Zembla, as in a great number of the plants which grow there the discolored leaf dries on the stalk, and is then swept away by the winds, so that the land would appear still more naked if many plants, such as the snow ranunculus (_Ranunculus nivalis_), were not so extremely abstemious as to require no humus at all, but merely a rocky crevice or some loose gravel capable of retaining moisture in its interstices. But even in Nova Zembla there are some more favored spots. Thus when Von Baer landed at the foot of a high slate mountain fronting the south-west, and reflecting the rays of the sun, he was astonished and delighted to see a gay mixture of purple silenes, golden ranunculuses, peach-colored parryas, white cerastias, and blue palemones, and was particularly pleased at finding the well-known forget-me-not among the ornaments of this Arctic pasture. Between these various flowers the soil was everywhere visible, for the dicotyledonous plants of the high latitudes produce no more foliage than is necessary to set off the colors of the blossoms, and have generally more flowers than leaves.