348 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [June 



"Walker in the Fox. To enumerate the numerous botanical 

 appendices to voyages, and separate opuscules to which these have 

 given rise, from Ross's first voyage to the present time, would be 

 out of place here. I have endeavoured to embody in the essay 

 the information gleaned from all of them. For the southern dis- 

 tribution of these plants in the United States, etc., T have had 

 recourse primarily to Asa Gray's excellent ' Manual of the Botany of 

 the Northern United States,' to Chapman's l Flora of the Southern 

 States,' and to the reports on the Botany of various Exploring 

 Expeditions. 



5. Arctic Greenland. — In area Arctic Greenland exceeds 

 any other arctic district except the Asiatic, but ranks lowest of 

 all in number of contained species. In many respects it is the 

 most remarkable of all the provinces, containing no peculiar species 

 whatever, scarcely any peculiarly American ones, and but a scanty 

 selection of European. A further peculiarity is that the flora of 

 its temperate regions is extremely poor, and adds very few species 

 to the whole flora, and, with few exceptions, only such as are 

 arctic in Europe also. Being the only arctic land that contracts 

 to the southward, forming a peninsula, which terminates in the 

 ocean in a high northern latitude, Greenland offers the key to the 

 explanation of most of the phenomena of arctic vegetation ; and 

 as I have already made use of it for this purpose, I shall be more 

 full in my description of its flora than of any other. 



The east and west coasts of Greenland differ in many important 

 features ; the eastern is the largest in extent, the least indented by 

 deep bays, is perennially encumbered throughout its entire length 

 by icefields and bergs, which are carried south by a branch of the 

 arctic current that sets between Iceland and Greenland ; and is 

 hence excessively cold, barren, and almost inaccessible. The west 

 coast, again, is generally more or less free from pack ice from Cape 

 Farewell (lat. 60°) to north of Upernsevik in lat. 73°. It is 

 washed by a southerly current, which is said to carry drift timber 

 from the Siberian rivers into its fiords, and enjoys a far milder 

 climate, and consequently has a more luxuriant vegetation. A 

 somewhat similar contrast is exhibited between West Greenland 

 and the opposite shores of Baffin's Bay, against which latter the 

 northerly arctic current from Lancaster Sound drives great masses 

 of polar ice, derived from the regions beyond that estuary, and to 

 which the bergs that float away from the glaciers in the Greenland 



