110 



been thoroughly investigaled. Chr. Martins has also written a 

 paper on this question (cfr. p. 2), but though it is vahiable as one 

 of the earliest attempts towards a study of phyto-geography , it 

 must be owned that his conclusions do not hold good, owing to 

 the faet that the material he had at his disposal was very imperfect 

 and erroneous; as an example may be mentioned that he records 

 (1. c. p. 424) 31 species as found in the Færoes, but absent in Shet- 

 land and Iceland, while more recent investigations failed to trace 

 no less than 20 of these species in the Færoes, showing that his 

 statements must have been based upon mistakes, and of the re- 

 maining 11, 10 have now been found in Iceland, leaving only one 

 species concerning which his record is correct. It is easy to under- 

 stand that such premises (and he had no better at his command) 

 may lead to strange conclusions, as e. g. that the tlora of the Færoes 

 has migrated partly from America and partly from Europe (»ces 

 iles ont été peuplées conjointement par 1' Europe et par l'Amerique«, 

 p. 435), though Martins is of opinion that the greater part is from 

 Europe (»la migration européene est evidemment prédominante«, 

 p. 440). Of the theories maintained by him one holds good to our 

 day, viz. that the Flora of the Færoes is due to immigration, and 

 that the species have not developed on the spot. 



The Floristic components and the place occupied by 

 the Færoese Flora in Phyto-Geography. The flora of all the 

 northern countries is generally supposed to be made up of species 

 of different origin and to have migrated at difTerent times and in 

 different ways. A. Blytt^ has propounded this theory with regard 

 to Norway in several papers, and later on it has been further 

 worked out by others. In Great Britain the matter has not re- 

 ceived much attention since the days of Forbes and Watson, 

 so that at the present time we have no up-to-date investigations 

 for this country. 



In the preceding pages I have several times used the terms 

 »Arctic«, »Temperate European« and >^ Atlantic« and these terms answer 

 broadly to Blytt's »Arctic«, »Subarctic« and »Atlantic«. I apply the 

 term Arctic to those species which in the present day are chieflij 

 met with in the Arctic regions, in the mountains of Scandinavia the 



1 A. Blytt: Essay on the immigration of the Norwegian Flora. Christiania 1876. 

 klem: Die Theorie der wechselnden kontinentalen und insularen Klimate. 

 (Engler's Botanische Jahrbiicher. Bd. 2. 1882). 



klem: On the distribution of piants (Journ. of Botany, 1887). 



