214 FLORA OF THE FAROE ISLANDS. 



The Faroe Islands are situate in the Greenland Sea, in a position 

 between the Shetlands and Iceland, and somewhat nearer the latter, 

 from which they are distant about 200 miles in a north-west direction. 

 They lie between the Gist and 63rd parallels N. lat., and the 6th and 

 8th ^y. long., being nearly due north of the Hebrides. 



The list contains as complete a catalogue of the vegetation of the 

 Islands as the author could obtain, not only from his own observations 

 but from the various contributions which have at different times been 

 published since 1771, the date of the first plant-record. In that 

 year a plate (t. 568) was given in the " Flora Danica," of '' Scilla 

 hifolia,"^ found in the Faroes by Army-Surgeon Schroeder. Twenty- 

 three years after, at t. 1086, Anagallis tequila is said to have been 

 "found by H. Mohr, Faroes." After this comes another blank of 

 24 years, but from 1818 onwards Faroe Islands plants are not unfre- 

 quent in the work. Of 54 species in all, chiefly Cryptogams, the 

 greater part were contributed by Lyngbye. In Lucas Debes's 

 " Foeroa reserata," published in 1673, scarcely any information on 

 the vegetation can be discovered. H. Mohr's '' Essay on the Natural 

 History of Iceland " (Copenhagen, 1786), however, incidentally men- 

 tions 25 plants as growing in the Faroes ; all of these were noticed by 

 Kostrup, except Potamogeton noMns and Carex vesicaria, both of which 

 names appear to have been misapplied to nearly allied species. The 

 most botanically important of the older books is the Rev. Jorgen 

 Landt's "Descriptive Sketch of the Faroe Islands" (Copenhagen, 

 1800), to which Mohr is locally said to have chiefly contributed the 

 botanical portion. In this book are enumerated 203 Phanerogams, 

 from which for various reasons, however, 18 must be removed, and 

 102 Cryptogams, of which also some have to be omitted as repetitions, 

 or from want of descriptions and references to authorities, now inde- 

 terminable. The next author who concerns the flora is Hans Christian 

 Lyngbye, who with Government assistance made an exploration of 

 the Islands in 1817. His results are partly, as above noticed, given in 

 the Flora Danica, partly employed in Horneman's Botany, and the Alga3 

 are given in his well-known " Hydrophytologica Danica," published 

 in 1819. In this work 124 species (excluding varieties which have 

 been made species by subsequent authors, and two plants since referred 

 to Lichens, as well as one now known to be a Fungus) are mentioned 

 as met with in the Faroes. The first part of Horneman's " Plan- 

 telaere " (1821) contains 143 Phanerogams, and the second part 

 (1837) 72, together 215 Faroe species, which all rest on the authority 

 of Landt, Lyngbye, and Trevelyan. Of these, however, 27 have to 

 be struck off as more or less doubtful. In the remaining part of the 

 book 270 Cryptogams are enumerated as growing in the islands, the Algas 

 are acknowledged to be taken from Lyngbye's work; of the remainder 

 1 1 have to be suppressed as doubtful inhabitants of the Faroes. The 

 next author is W. C. Trevelyan, "On the Vegetation and Tempera- 

 ture of the Faroe Islands," first printed in the " Edinb. New Phil. 

 Journal" for 1835. An improved edition was published at Florence 

 in a separate form in 1837. This latter contains a tolerably full cata- 

 logue of the entire flora so far as then known, based upon the col- 

 lections of Lyngbye and the author's, which were made during a five 

 months' exploration during the summer of 1821, partly in company 



