THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7978, 6 April 1904, Page 4

THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH.

A SCIENTIST'S COMPARISONS. THE DESOLATE SOUTH,. Dr Koettlitz, who was a member of the Jaekson-Harmsworth expedition, ; which spent three years in the North Polar ! regions, returning to England in 1897. states that the Antarctic regions, in comparison, are the abomination of desolation, as plant life has absolutely no existence there to the- casual observer. \He informed a reporter that even in the most inhospitable regions of the Arctic regions, 6uch as Franz; Joseph Land, where the expedition canned on its operations, vegetable life was represented by a large number of flowering plants and cryptogamic plants, such as mosses and lichens. In the north, in fact, the flowering plants had a number of representatives of great beauty. The Arctic poppy and the purple saxifrage, which bloomed in great clusters, very j conspicuous. Buttercups and scurvy-grass, with numbers of other alpine small white > flowers, were also seen frequently. All ' these plants were found in secluded nooks and places that were sheltered from the wind. Lanre expauseß of grass were a common sight. TJie mosses could be seen in large beds, in places where there was plenty of moisture, in the summer, and peat formed by dead mess was easily obtained. Lichens covered every rock and Eton© where the sea did not wash. They coloured the. cliffs in many varieties of shades. Sometimes the mosses, ako, displayed beautiful colours, from bright. green to brown. In the water there were many al?je and other forms of vegetable life, including minute diatoms. But in the Antarctic retrions, so far as the explorers could ascertain,; there w«re no flowering plants whatever. Lichens were comparatively scarce and not in very great variet-v. A few very poor samples of mosses could be foimd everywhere if they were well searched for among: the crevices of the rocks, but only in very favourable situations could they be obtained in anything like luxuriance. In most fresh-water ponds of the south there was very little to be found. The honours in regard to seaweeds were about equal. The Arctic regions, of course/ had b*en explored much more than the Antarctic ! regions, and evidence' had been found in ' the north of nsany changes in climate. It was impossible to say whether that applied to the whole of tho.ee regions, as the evidence was not complete. There was ample demonstration, however, that there had been subtropical climate in parts, a temperate climate in other parts, and' a, subArctic climate in ©till other parts. It was probable that at one time the forests of trees extended as far as the Pole, but now they did not reach 70 north, latitude, except in very favourable situations, each as in the north of Norway. * . Until the Discovery expedition, took place, it was not known whether or not similar changes had taken place in the south, but the recent plant fossils found "by Mr Ferrar, and some which, he believed, had also been obtained by the Swedish expedition, proved that similar changes Jrad taken place in the Antarctic regions. The extent

of those changes, however, bad not been determined. There were no evidences of forests, and the expedition had seen nothing in Ihe form of fossil or petrified wood. The difference in the vegetation of the two regions coultf be accounted for by the fact that the mean temperatures of those parts of the world were markedly different. The mean temperature in the Antarctio was at least lOdeg lower than the mean temperature of the north, and tie difference in the summer temperature was even more marked. In the Arctic' regions, temperatures of 70deg Fahrenheit had been recorded, but in the Antarctic nothing much over 40dsg had been experienced. Seeing that no minute living thing could grow and develope unless it had a temperature above freezing point, and that in the Antarctic regions the temperature was generally below freezing point, except for terms of less than twenty-four hours, it was not surprising that so little vegetation was found there.