122 The Scottish Naturalist. 



Podetia pallida vel glaucescenti-pallida vel etiam pallide fus 

 cescentia (praesertiin infra), ramosa, ramis plerumque recurvis et 

 fissuris longitudinaliter hiascentibus terebratis et ramis ramulisque 

 apotheciis terminatis. 



Prope New Galloway (Coll. M'A. 96). This Cladonia partakes 

 of the characters of recurva, corymbosa and stricta. 



THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF SNOW AND ICE. 



By JOHN ROY. 



{Read before the Aberdeen Natural History Society on ijt/i Feb., 1885.) 



I SCARCELY think it necessary to offer any apology for laying 

 the following brief notes before the Society. They are 

 culled from the latest work by Baron Nordenskiold, the celebrated 

 Swedish explorer. This treatise, entitled " Studier och Forsk- 

 ningar," has not yet appeared in English, to my knowledge. The 

 part relating to the snow and ice vegetation has been written by 

 Prof. Veit Brecher Wittrock, of the University of Upsala, and the 

 points I mean to bring before you are from his paper. My object 

 is to call attention to the possibility of getting some of the species 

 enumerated in Dr. Wittrock's list on our own mountains. Of 

 course, we have no glaciers, and, therefore, no possibility of 

 obtaining those species which are confined to ice. None of our 

 hill-tops are above the limit of perpetual snow ; but on several 

 of them certain snow wreaths are nearly permanent ; for instance, 

 one between Ben Macdhui and Cairngorm, and another on the 

 summit of Braeriach. On Ben Nevis wreaths must be still more 

 nearly permanent. In 1843, Dr. Dickie found the Red Snow on 

 Ben Macdhui ; and it was reported long ago from Appin, a report 

 I have great difficulty in believing. I think some other species 

 must have been mistaken for it, more especially as the locality 

 was somewhere near the sea-level. 1 have no doubt the red snow 

 will be found on our hills again, if looked for. What I would ask 

 those that have the opportunity of being in those elevated regions 

 in the month of August to do is to gather the dark-coloured, dusty- 

 looking stuff which is often seen on the surface of the snow. Even 

 with the aid of the lens there may not appear to be anything of a 

 vegetable nature in it. Still, many things may be concealed there, 



