The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

108 SCANDINAVIA.be absolutely uninhabitable, and Solloisa, or "Sunless," in the Bergen district, isso called because it never receives the direct rays of the sun.The climatic anomalies of the western seaboard disappear rapidly as we goeastwards. The mean temperature of the Norwegian coast exceeds by 36°that of its latitude, whereas the excess is reduced to 18° north of Christianiaand TJpsala. Here the climate becomes continental. Its daily, monthly,and annual deviations are more and more considerable, rising from 18° on thecoast, between July and June, to 54° in Swedish Lapland. In these highlatitudes the summers are about as warm as in South Sweden, but the wintersare much colder, and the bogs of Lapland remain in some places frozenthroughout the year.*Scandinavian Floka.Even in the zones of vegetation considerable anomalies occur. Althoughthe mean temperature is everywhere higher on the Norwegian seaboard than onthe eastern slopes, several species of trees reach a far higher latitude in Swedenthan in Norway. Thus the Norwegian pine forests cease about the Norrlandfrontier at the arctic circle, though they extend much farther north in Sweden.By an analogous phenomenon, the birch, which stops at an elevation of about 1,050feet on the Norwegian slopes, ascends to double that height on the Swedish side.Over 2,000 European plants have their northern limit in Scandinavia. Achart exhibited by Schtibeler at the Paris Geographical Congress shows thehitherto determined polar limits of 1,900 cultivated and wild plants of theNorwegian shores. Travelling from south to north and from west to east, wefind the plants of the temperate European zone successively disappearing. Firstis passed the beech and hornbeam zone, comprising South Scania, the Kattegat,and the south-west coast of Norway as far as Bergen, a little to the north ofwhich is found the northernmost beech forest of the globe. The mingling ofthis light green foliage with the dark conifers forms the great charm of theChristiania coast scenery.The oak zone comprises all Central Sweden to the river Dal, and theNorwegian coast to the neighbourhood of Christianssund. The white alder, thepine, fir, and birch extend much farther north, and attain higher elevations onthe hillsides, the birch flWrishing even on the Finmark plains. The absolutetree-line takes in but a very small part of Norway about the northern shores ofthe Varanger- fiord. The southern shores are fringed with veritable forests ofpine, fir, birch, aspen, elder, and service trees.All the Scandinavian species are exotics, which have occupied this regionsince the glacial period. Yet so deep is the verdure of the foliage, so vivid thecolours of the flowers, that most botanists might fancy themselves in the presence