346 PB0F. T. M. FEIES ON THE LICHENS 



of this are not such as would be likely to be eaten by birds and 

 thus carried to a great distance, as is the case with many Solana- 

 ceous plants. 



On the Lichens collected during the English Polar Expedition 

 of 1S75-7G. By Theodor M. FbijG; Professor of Botany 

 in the University of Upsala. (Communicated by Sir Joseph 

 Hooker, C.B., F.R.S.) 



[Read June 5, 1879.] 



Preliminary Remarks. 



Lichexography has made much progress during the last few 

 decades, and in almost every respect our knowledge of the Lichens 

 bas been improved. Even the arctic forms of this class of plauts 

 have been objects of very keen investigation ; and the number of 

 species known from arctic regions is hence mucli greater now than 

 it was some twenty or thirty years ago. 



Nevertheless our knowledge of these plants in the most remote 

 regions of the North, some of which were not discovered till lately, 

 is but very small. The few that were brought from Seven Islands 

 (80° 38 f -49 f N. lat.), in the north of Spitzbergen, by Sir Edward 

 Parry in 1827 and by A. E. Nordenskiold in 1861, were, till a few 

 years ago, the only described representatives of these hardy plants. 

 In a short tisit to Spitzbergen in 1868 I added a few species 

 from above the lat. 81° N. 



• . • 



In the years 1860-1861, Dr. J. J. Hayes made his expe< 

 through Smith Sound and Kennedy Channel, when he reached 

 Cape Lieber (81° 30' N. lat.). The plants collected on that occasion 

 are all enumerated by E. Durand, Th. P. James, and S. Ashmed in 

 ' Proceed, of the Acad, of Nat. Science of Philadelphia/ 1863, 

 p. 93 ; their treatise afterwards appeared in Dr. A. Peterinann s 

 ' G-eogr. Mittheil.' 1864, p. 487, under the title " Flora des Grin- 

 nell-Landes zwischen 78° und 82° nordl. Br." The lichens men- 

 tioned there are 23 ; but evidently their determination is very 

 uncertain ; or, properly speaking, it is certainly false* ; added to 

 which no localities are given, so that there is no possibility ot 



Every liehenographist easily conceives that it must be impossible that Alec- 

 toria sulcata and bicolor, Neuropogon Taylori, Parmelia Borreri, etc. should 

 exist in these regions. " Verrucaria poptdaris, Floerke," is nowhere described 

 or even mentioned before. 



