CHAPTER V.

Red snow, what is it?--First forms of vegetable life--The lichens, their variety--Reindeer moss--Rock-hair--Rock tripe, or _tripe de roche_--Used as food--Iceland moss and its properties--The mosses of the Arctic Regions--Scurvy-grass--The fly-agaric--Microscopic vegetation--A memorial of Franklin--Phænogamous plants of the North--Cryptogamous plants--Vegetation in Novaia Zemlaia--In Spitzbergen--In Kamtschatka--The _Fritallaria sarrana_--The wooded and desert zones--Forms of animal life--Natural history of the reindeer--His usefulness--His food--Reindeer and wolves--Cunning of the Arctic wolf--Domesticity of the wolf--The musk-ox described--Captain M’Clintock quoted--The Arctic fox--His wariness--A fox-trap--The bear and the fox--The Arctic hare--The Alpine hare--The Hudson Bay lemming--The Mustelidæ family--The marten--The sable--The polecat--About the glutton, or wolverine--anecdotes of his extraordinary sagacity--A great enemy to the trapper--The biter bit--Arctic birds--The falcons--The crows--Distribution of animals 135–161