Historical survey of the botanical investigations 
on the Island of Disko. 
wince to the easy access to the harbour of Godhayn and also on ac- 
6) count of the importance of this settlement as the head-quarters of 
the Royal Inspector of Danish North Greenland, Disko has become the 
most frequently visited locality of Greenland. Besides the Danish tra- 
vellers, nearly all North-Polar Expeditions through Davis Strait have 
anchored here and plants have been collected. With few exceptions 
however, only the vicinity of the settlement has been studied. 
In the following I shall endeavour shortly to characterize the im- 
portance of each contribution or, in other words to give the history 
of our knowledge of the higher plants on Disko, however leaving aside 
the scanty contributions to the flora of Greenland from the 18th cen- 
tury, as surely very few of them have been brought home from that 
island. 
During his journeys in 1806—13 for the Danish Government, 
the famous mineralogist C. L. Gieseckre spent much time in the ex- 
ploring of Disko, where he, at different times, visited the Disko-Fjord, 
the South Coast, parts of the Vajgat and the North Coast. He also 
incidentally collected plants, and gave in his article »Greenland«, in 
Brewsters »The Edinburgh Encyclopedia 1816« a list of plants observed 
in Greenland, but without any mention of special localities. His 
diary, of which the main parts were published in 1878 by JounstRupP, 
also contains numerous notices of plants collected or observed. But 
Girsecke’s identifications are only partially to be relied upon, and 
Lance did not revise the collection of Gresrcke till 1887 (see below). 
The richest collections of plants ever brought home from West 
Greenland by one collector, were made by Jens Vani, who, sent by our 
Government, spent 8 years in Greenland and who, during the years 
1855—36 visited several times the neighbourhood of Godhayn. Un- 
fortunately this able and thoroughly scientifically trained botanist 
