We have not space to dwell upon the grasses and fungi, though these are numerous, and some of them interesting. The cochlearia, or scurvy-grass, has often proved of great utility to Arctic explorers; and Dr. Kane on more than one occasion availed himself of its medicinal properties. Fungi extend almost to the very limits of Arctic vegetation. The Greenlanders and Lapps make use of them for tinder, or as styptics for stopping the flow of blood, and allaying pain. In Siberia they abound. Frequently, in the high latitudes, they take the form of “snow mould,” and are found growing on the barren and ungenial snow. These species are warmed into life only when the sun has grown sufficient to melt the superficial snow-crust, without producing a general thaw, and then they spread far and wide in glittering wool-like patches, dotted with specks of red or green. When the snow melts, they overspread the grass beneath like a film of cobweb, and in a day or two disappear.
In Siberia grows the fly-agaric (Agaricus muscarius), from which the inhabitants obtain an intoxicating liquor of peculiarly dangerous character. It has a tall white stem, surmounted by a dome of rich orange scarlet, studded with white scaly tubercles, and in some parts of Kamtschatka and the northern districts of Siberia is so abundant that the ground sparkles and shines as if covered with a scarlet carpet. The natives collect it during the hot summer months, and dry it. Steeped in the juice of the whortleberry, it forms a powerful intoxicating wine; or rolled up like a bolus, and swallowed without chewing, it produces much the same effect as opium. On some, however, it acts as an excitant, and induces active muscular exertion. A talkative person, under its influence, cannot keep silence or secrets; one fond of music, sings incessantly; and if a person who has partaken of it wishes to step over a straw or small stick, he takes a stride or jump sufficient to clear the trunk of a tree!
The Koriaks and Kamtschatkans personify this fungus, under the name of Mocho Moro, as one of their penates, or household gods; and if they are impelled by its effects to commit any dreadful crime, they pretend they act only in obedience to commands which may not be disputed. To qualify themselves for murder or suicide, they drink additional doses of “this intoxicating product of decay and corruption.”
During Captain Penny’s voyage in search of Sir John Franklin, he picked up two pieces of floating drift-wood, far beyond the usual limit of Eskimo occupation, which, from their peculiar appearance, excited a lively curiosity. The one was found in Robert Bay, off Hamilton Island, lat. 76° 2’ north, and long. 76° west,—that is, in the route which Franklin’s ships, it is supposed, had followed,—and was plainly a fragment of wrought elm plank, which had been part of a ship’s timbers. It exhibited three kinds of surface,—one that had been planed and pitched, one roughly sawn, and the third split with an axe. The second piece of drift-wood was picked up on the north side of Cornwallis Island, in lat. 75° 36’ north, and long. 96° west. It was a branch of white spruce, much bleached in some places, and in others charred and blackened as if it had been used for fuel.
On both fragments traces of microscopic vegetation were discovered; and as it was thought they might, if carefully examined, afford some clue to the fate of Franklin’s expedition, they were submitted to Mr. Berkeley, a well-known naturalist. In the report which he addressed to the Admiralty, he stated that the vegetation in both cases resembled the dark olive mottled patches with which wooden structures in this country, if exposed to atmospheric influences, are speedily covered. The bleached cells and fibres of the fragment of elm were filled up with slender fungoid forms, myceliæ; while on its different surfaces appeared several dark-coloured specks, belonging to the genus Phoma. As it was not probable that plants so minute could have retained, through the terrible severity of an Arctic winter, their delicate naked spores in the perfect condition in which they were found, Mr. Berkeley concluded that they must have been developed through that same summer; while from three to four years, in those high latitudes and amid the rigour of stormy ice-covered seas, would suffice to produce the bleached appearance of the wood. Hence he inferred that the plank had not been long exposed.
On the other fragment of drift-wood he discovered some deeply-embedded minute black fungoid forms, called Sporidesmium lepraria. Unlike the phomas, which are very ephemeral, these plants possess the longevity of the lichens, and the same patches last for years unchanged on the same pieces of wood, while their traces are discernible for a still longer period. From their condition, Mr. Berkeley inferred that the fungi on the drifted wood had not been recently developed, but that, on the contrary, they were the remains of the species which existed on the drift-wood when used for fuel by the unfortunate crews of Franklin’s ships, the Erebus and the Terror.
There can be no doubt whatever, as Dr. Macmillan remarks, considering the circumstances in which they were discovered, and the remarkable appearances they presented—there can be no reasonable doubt that both fragments of drift-wood belonged to, or were connected with, the lost ships; and the curious information regarding the course they pursued at a certain time, furnished by witnesses so extraordinary and unlikely as a few tiny dark specks of cryptogamic vegetation on floating drift-wood, was confirmed, in a wonderful manner, by the after-discovery of the first authentic account ever obtained of the sad and pathetic history of Franklin’s expedition.
The reader will not expect to find the tundras of Northern Asia or the shores of the Polar Sea rich in bud and bloom, yet even these dreary wastes are not absolutely without floral decoration. Selinum and cerathium, as well as the poppy and sorrel, andromeda, and several species of heath, are mentioned by Dr. Kane as blooming in the neighbourhood of Smith Strait. On the south coast of the Polar Sea Dr. Richardson found a considerable variety of vegetation. We noticed, he says, about one hundred and seventy phænogamous or flowering plants; being one-fifth of the number of species which exist fifteen degrees of latitude further to the southward. He adds:—The grasses, bents, and rushes constitute only one-fifth of the number of species on the coast, but the two former tribes actually cover more ground than all the rest of the vegetation. The cruciferæ, or cross-like tribe, afford one-seventh of the species, and the compound flowers are nearly as numerous. The shrubby plants that reach the sea-coast are the common juniper, two species of willow, the dwarf-birch, the common alder, the hippophaë, a gooseberry, the red bear berry (arbutus uva ursi), the Labrador tea-plant, the Lapland rose, the bog-whortleberry, and the crowberry. The kidney-leaved oxyria grows in great abundance there, and occasionally furnished us with an agreeable addition to our meals, as it resembles the garden-sorrel in flavour, but is more juicy and tender. It is eaten by the natives, and must, as well as many of the cress-like plants, prove an excellent corrective of the gross, oily, rancid, and frequently putrid meat on which they subsist. The small balls of the Alpine bistort, and the long, succulent, and sweet roots of many of the astragaleæ, which grow on the sandy shores, are eatable; but it does not seem that the Eskimos are acquainted with their use. A few clumps of white spruce-fir, with some straggling black spruces and canoe-birches, grow at the distance of twenty or thirty miles from the sea, in sheltered situations on the banks of rivers.