ee 
a 
imposing number of 93 flowering plants and 152 cryptogams 
(mosses and lichens), which resist the most vigorous cold ; 
making a total of 245. Now 93 flowering plants may, per- 
haps, strike you as being rather numerous; but I would remind 
you that Iceland with its bleak climate, though far less in 
extent than Spitzbergen, numbers 402 species, while Ireland, 
again still smaller, boasts 960 flowering plants. 
I am not going to weary you with a catalogue of the names 
of the Spitzbergen plants, suffice it to say, that as in all 
Northern regions, they consist chiefly of the Graminacee 
(grasses), Crucifere, Caryophyllacee (pink family), Saxzfra- 
‘gaceg, and amongst the genera we find Draba (Willow Grass), 
Saxifraga, Ranunculus, Carex (Sedge), Poa (Meadow Grass). 
They are all necessarily perennial,—I say necessarily, because 
it would be impossible for any annual long to survive in so 
bleak a district, as a failure in any one year would lead to its 
utter destruction. You will find that while the Norwegian 
specimens are smaller than English plants of the same nature, 
that the Icelandic are smaller than the Norwegian, and the 
Spitzbergen again are smaller than the Icelandic. Among 
the Spitzbergen specimens you will find several Saxifrages, 
one of which (Saxifraga Cernua) I found under somewhat 
peculiar circumstances. I was wandering away from my com- 
panions with my rifle, in search of reindeer, and found myself 
in a gloomy valley, surrounded with black and jagged rocks ; 
all around a deathlike silence reigned, and as I wandered on, 
unconsciously impressed with the solemnity of the scene, but 
with my thoughts hundreds of miles away, I came suddenly 
on an open coffin of bleached and mouldering wood, within 
which lay stretched the whitened skeleton of a man; a rough 
deal cross was at his head, on which was an almost obliterated 
inscription in Dutch, of which I could just decipher enough 
to learn that I was looking on the remains of one Jacob 
Moore, who had died in 1726, and who had, doubtless, been 
one of the crew of some last century whaler, whose shipmates 
had given him the only burial in their power, by leaving him 
in his coffin on this inhospitable shore, where the ground is 
so hardened with ice, that even in Summer it is impossible to 
dig three inches into its frosty surface. Within the coffin and 
peeping out between the whitened bones, grew this tiny 
graceful flowering Saxifrage ! 
