The Flora of Greenland and its Origin. 



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overseas by wind, water or hirds, as is also the case with 

 a not inconsiderable number of other southern species. 



The ahove is, briefly, what is given in extant literature, 

 from Warming (1888) up to the present time, as to the 

 Greenland flora and its origin. My own studies do not 

 amount to any revolution relative to the views here ex- 

 pressed; they form, rather, a natural development based on 

 our better knowledge at the present day as to the tlora and 

 the geographical distribution of its species. 



III. The Age of the Flora in Relation to the Glacial Period. 



As to the age of the Greenland flora this question 

 cannot be answered with any certainty. In the Cretaceous 

 and older Tertiary periods Greenland had a warmly tem- 

 pera te flora, the remains of which are known i. a. from 

 deposits in central West-Greenland (the Vaigat district), 

 this flora being now naturally extinct in Greenland, 



In arctic and subarctic to coldly temperate regions there 

 is, at the present time, a flora whose species for the greater 

 part have a circumpolar distribution. It is a natural suppo- 

 sition that this flora in pre-glacial times lived in the polar 

 regions and was gradually driven south, according as the 

 ice gained the upper band. The question which interests 

 us in this connection is whether the most hardy of the species 

 of this flora, viz.: those which at the present time live in 

 the most northerly plant-bearing regions, may have survived 

 the maximum of the glacial period in Greenland. I do not 

 mean that they have continued to exist in the same place 

 since before the glacial period, but for instance that by 

 the action of the ice they were driven down to southern 

 Greenland, and from there, at a later period, again migrated 

 towards the north. 



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