284 PROF. C. C. BABTNGTON ON THE FLORA OF ICELAND. 



if quite as, satisfactory as the older ones. It therefore seems 

 desirable to draw up a revised list, derived from all the sources 

 of information now easily accessible. Fortunately I have been 

 able to examine nearly all the books (some of them very rare) 

 which treat of the flora of Iceland either expressly or inci- 

 dentally — a greater number, apparently, than was accessible to 

 any former compiler. Unfortunately, very few of the systematic 

 lists take any notice of the localities of the plants they enumerate. 

 This is the case wath the only separate Flora of Iceland (Hjaltalin's 

 'Islenzk Grasafra^di'). I have therefore collected together as 

 many localities as possible, and in every case marked (!) those of 

 them whence I have seen specimens, except where my own au- 

 thority is given. 



The following is as complete an account of the authorities 

 upon which the Flora depends as I have been able to prepare. It 

 is true that Dr. Lauder Lindsay gives a longer list of writers, 

 with many of whose works he is unacquainted; but in a few 

 cases the titles of the books are repetitions, and in others the 

 works seem to be of little value or consequence. He also enu- 

 merates such books as Ida PfeifFer's ' Journal * and Henderson's 

 ' Journal,' in which there are a few incidental notices of plants. 

 One book, Palson's ' Grasafraedi,' written about 1800, may be 

 valuable, as is the opinion of Dr. Lindsay; but neither he nor I 

 have been able to find a copy of it in accessible libraries. The 

 " List of Icelandic Plants, with their Linnean names," by Olaf 

 Olafsen, contained iu the ^ Transactions ' of the first Literary 

 Society of Iceland (Eit pesz Islenska Laerdoms, i. 1-10), is 

 simply a list of Linnsean and Icelandic names of plants ; in 



vol. viii. (pp. 193-212) of the same series is ^- A Paper on the 



Grasses and Grass-like Plants," by the same author ; the List 

 was published in 1781, the Paper in 1788. 



Muller published the first Flora of Iceland in the ' Nova Acta 

 Acad. C. L. C. Nat. Cunosorum' (vol. iv. pp. 203-215), in the 

 year 1770. It is not the result of his own researches, but de- 

 rived from the manuscripts of J. G. Konig, M.D., who collected 

 the plants enumerated in the years 1764 and 1765, but was pre- 

 vented from publishing the list by his departure for India, where 

 he settled as a medical practitioner at Tranquebar. It is entitled 

 " Enumeratio stirpium in Islandia sponte crescentium." It is 

 sometimes quoted as Miiller's, but more correctly as Konig's 

 Flora. This is the foundation of the Plora of Iceland. 



