434 THE FLOWERING PLANTS OF NOVAYA ZEMLYA, ETC. 



167. Lycopodium Selago L. Met with on Dolgoi Island, and 

 common on Waigats. 



168. Cystopteris fragilis Bernh. Dolga Bay, Waigats, Bese- 

 mannya Bay, and head of Beluga Bay, Lutke Land, at an elevation 

 of 500 ft. 



Conclusions. 



I venture to offer a few remarks based upon my observations of 

 plant-growth over the areas referred to in the preceding pages. 

 Sir Joseph Hooker has long since pointed out that Lapland is by 

 far the richest province of the Arctic regions, whilst Arctic Asia 

 from the Gulf of Obi to Bering's Straits contains by far the poorest 

 flora of any on the globe. That great authority, though including 

 Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemlya, and the arctic countries west of the 

 river Ob in the Lapland province, has shown that in that area there 

 are two floras corresponding to the Arctic-Norwegian and Arctic- 

 Russian, the latter commencing at the White Sea, and comparatively 

 exceedingly poor in species, though containing some twenty that 

 are not Lapponian. Mr. Philip Sewell has given us an excellent 

 treatise on this subject'-' in his paper on the Flora of Lapland and 

 the Yu.s;or Straits, in which he vividly depicts the poverty of the 

 Arctic-Russian province in comparison with the Lapponian, and he 

 expresses the opinion that the low-lying land eastward from the 

 White Sea affords no suitable foothold which would allow of east- 

 ward distribution along the same line of latitude, and that the 

 difference in the physical nature of the region of the Yugor Straits 

 and the greater cold thereabouts are evidently the chief causes which 

 restrict the distribution. This no doubt is correct as far as it goes, 

 but it may not be amiss to enter more fully into the physical 

 differences which characterize the two regions of Lapponia and 

 Arctic Russia. Lapland and the Kola Peninsula are mountainous 

 or elevated regions bearing on their surfaces the impress of glacio- 

 terrene action. They appear to me as areas from which an ice-cap, 

 or mer-de-glace, has but recently been removed, and we may assume 

 that during the period of maximum Scandinavian glaciation Lap- 

 land and the Kola Peninsula were heavily clad with ice, and con- 

 siderably raised above sea-level. Judging from what we now see in 

 Greenland, Grinnell Land, Spitsbergen, and Franz Josef Land, we 

 may reasonably infer that phanerogamic vegetation was not actually 

 extirpated throughout Scandinavia and Lapland during the period 

 of maximum ice accumulation. 



The theory that a huge ice-cap at one period covered the entire 

 polar area entirely rests on assumption and hypothesis. If, as I 

 surmise, Lapland during its ice-period retained a flora, even as 

 much as now exists in Grinnell Land and the north of Greenland 

 between the parallels of 82^^ and 83"^, that would on the retirement 

 of the ice become an important factor in the dissemination of a 

 flora over an area recently released from ice, whilst m [ill probability 



* "Flora of Lapland and Yugor Straits," Trans, Edinb. Bot. Soc. xvii. 

 444-481. 



