The damp and cool Icelandic summer, though it prevents the successful cultivation of corn, is favorable to the growth of grasses, so that in some of the better farms the pasture-grounds are hardly inferior to the finest meadows in England. About one-third of the surface of the country is covered with vegetation of some sort or other fit for the nourishment of cattle; but, as yet, art has done little for its improvement--ploughing, sowing, drainage, and levelling being things undreamt of. With the exception of the grasses, which are of paramount importance, and the trees, which, in spite of their stunted proportions, are of great value, as they supply the islanders with the charcoal needed for shoeing their horses, few of the indigenous plants of Iceland are of any use to man. The _Angelica archangelica_ is eaten raw with butter; the matted roots or stems of the _Menyanthes trifoliata_ serve to protect the backs of the horses against the rubbing of the saddle; and the Icelandic moss, which is frequently boiled in milk, is likewise an article of exportation. The want of better grain frequently compels the poor islanders to bake a kind of bread from the seeds of the sand-reed (_Elymus arenarius_), which on our dunes are merely picked by the birds of passage; and the oarweed or tangle (_Laminaria saccharina_) is prized as a vegetable in a land where potatoes and turnips are but rarely cultivated. When the first settlers came to Iceland, they found but two indigenous land-quadrupeds: a species of field-vole (_Arvicola œconomus_) and the Arctic fox; but the seas and shores were no doubt tenanted by a larger number of whales, dolphins, and seals than at the present day. The ox, the sheep, and the horse which accompanied the Norse colonists to their new home, form the staple wealth of their descendants; for the number of those who live by breeding cattle is as three to one, compared with those who chiefly depend on the sea for their subsistence. Milk and whey are almost the only beverages of the Icelanders. Without butter they will eat no fish; and curdled milk, which they eat fresh in summer and preserve in a sour state during the winter, is their favorite repast. Thus they set the highest value on their cattle, and tend them with the greatest care. In the preservation of their sheep, they are much hampered by the badness of the climate, by the scantiness of winter food, and by the attacks of the eagles, the ravens, and the foxes, more particularly at the lambing season, when vast numbers of the young animals are carried off by all of them. The wool is not sheared off, but torn from the animal’s back, and woven by the peasantry, during the long winter evenings, into a kind of coarse cloth, or knit into gloves and stockings, which form one of the chief articles of export.