TOPOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY. 39 while the lava-covered tract round Hulda is said to be hut 240 square miles in extent. In the south-western portion of the island, between the capital and the south coast, there are over 500 square miles of country covered with lava ; and between the Mf/rdal's Jokull and Skaptdr Jokull there are the tracts covered with the lava-floods that there streamed forth in 1783 ; two entire river- valleys and over 200 square miles of low-lying land ! Nearly one-seventh of the whole area of the island consists of JoJclar, or glacier-covered heights ; the Vatna Jokull is credited, as before stated, with an area of 3,000 square miles, the Sofs Jokull with 500, Lang Jokull with 440, the group of Joklar in the south, of which the Mgrdal’s Jokull is the chief, with about 350, and the Dranga and Gldmu Joklar, lying on the north-west peninsula, with 400. With reference to the moorlands and pastures (there is no arable land), Professor Johnstrup says : ‘ It is exceedingly difficult to give, even approximately, an estimate of the area of the pasture lands of Iceland, as these imperceptibly run into extensive heaths with a most meagre grass growth. The area of the pasture land is usually estimated at 746 (Danish= 15,000 English) square miles, hut this includes all that can by any means be brought under this heading.’ This is, unquestionably, an over-estimate, notwithstand- ing that a large extent—possibly 3,000 to 4,000 square miles—of the eastern part of the island is elevated moorland, for year after year the area of the pasture land is decreasing, while that of the sand deserts is increasing—every gale of wind sweeping over the latter, when uncovered by snow, spreading over the former a thin covering of wind-borne sand ; and it is impossible to travel far, especially in the vicinity of the larger deserts, without coming across extensive tracts of moorland buried to a depth of several inches, which but a few years since nourished a growth of stunted birch and willows, whose stems project through the black sand bleached and dead. With reference to the thousand square miles or so of moorland in the east, buried under pumice by the 1875 eruptions, it is believed they will only remain useless as pasture land for a few years, the expansive action of the frost upon the rain and snow water within the porous pumice will soon degrade it into fertilizing soil, and the grass growth here will be richer than ever. There is no great depth of soil upon the elevated moorlands ; a depth of five feet is about the average. The glaciers, lava and sand deserts, moorlands, and pastures thus cover about 28,000 square miles, and the remaining 10,000 consist

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