Chap, ix.] VERTICAL RANGE OF ANTARCTIC PLANTS. 1 95 



only 18 cryptogams, mosses, lichens, and algte, 12 of which were ? 

 terrestrial, no trace of phanerogams. Yet in Saltdalen, in t 

 Norway, north of the Arctic Circle, there are fine timber forests 'f 

 and thriving farms, yielding abundant crops of hay and bnrley. 'j 

 Melville Island, in lat. 74° 75' N., 500 miles north of the Arctic \ 

 Circle, has a vegetation of 67 flowering plants. ' 



Sir J. D. Hooker, in his latest memoir on the botany of 

 Kerguelen's Land, says : " The three small archipelagoes of 

 Kerguelen Island (including the Heard Islands), Marion and 

 Prince Edward's Islands, and the Crozets, are individually and 

 collectively the most barren tracts on the globe, whether in 

 their own latitude or in a higher one, except such as lie within 

 the Antarctic Circle itself; for no land, even within the North 

 Polar area, presents so impoverished a vegetation."* 



About the sides of the hummocks already described grew 

 scantily four species of mosses, one of which proved to be new 

 and peculiar to the island. 



The majority of the land surface of Heard Island, free from 

 ice, besides the green tract described, is entirely devoid of 

 vegetation. Only on the t^alus slopes of the hills, on their shel- 

 tered sides, are seen scattered in a very few places scanty 

 patches of green. The lower portions of these are composed 

 mainly of Azorella, and they stretch up the slopes, and terminate 

 at an elevation of a few hundred feet in bright yellow patches, 

 consisting entirely of mosses, just as at Marion Island. I 

 searched in vain for lichens of any kind. 



There seems to be a very great difference with regard to the \ 

 vertical range of plants in these southern islands, and in the < 

 Arctic regions. In Marion Island, I estimated the absolute 

 limit of vegetation at an altitude of about 2,000 feet ; in Ker- 

 guelen's Land, the limit seems to lie at about 1,500 feet or 

 lower ; plants of any kind are there already scarce at 1,000 feet 

 above sea level. In Heard Island vegetation seems to cease at 

 300 or 400 feet altitude. Yet in East Greenland, the same ; 

 plants are found to range from sea level up to 3,000 feet, and ^ 

 there is no real limit of altitude ; even at 7,000 feet elevation 

 a thick cushion of moss, several inches in length, was found by 

 the German North Polar Expedition covering the ground.t 



This remarkable condition in the Arctic regions is mainly 

 accounted for by Dr. Pansch, by the fact that, with the sun 

 always near the horizon in high latitudes, the hill-slopes receive 



* "Observations on the Botany of Kerguelen Island, by Sir J. D. 

 Hooker, P.R.S.," etc. Transit of Venus Expedition, Botany, pp. 2, 3. 



f " Die zweite Deutsche Nord-Polarfahrt in den Jahren iS69und 1870." 

 2 Bd. Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse, Leipzig. F. A. Brockhaus. " Klima 

 und Pfianzenleben auf (^stgronland," von Adolf Pansch in Kiel. 



