Ai'u. 1899.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBUKGII oil 



belongs to that element of European vegetation, which, in 

 "Acta Universitatis Lundensis," 1886, he termed the Altai 

 Hora, and which is ahnost identical with the Steppes flora of 

 more recent writers. This flora has a circumpolar range 

 without being arctic, and its representatives are now in 

 Europe restricted to widely isolated localities. The 

 Professor believes that after the Glacial period this flora 

 of Central Asia immigrated into Europe in the track of 

 the Arctic flora, and that it was afterwards supplanted 

 more and more in Europe by more southern elements 

 belonging to the Caucasian, Mediterranean, and Atlantic 

 flora. One of the most typical representatives of the Altai 

 flora is Fotentilla friUicosa, whose area extends from Canada 

 and Newfoundland, right across the northern tracts of 

 North America to the Behring Islands, Kamtschatka, the 

 whole of Siberia to Western Eussia, Oland, the north of 

 England and Ireland, and the Pyrenees. lioughly speaking, 

 A. stelleriana occupies the same area, though its range 

 is much more interrupted. Professor Areschoug instances 

 the remarkable circumstance that A. maritima, which 

 belongs to the Atlantic flora, and which is not rare on 

 other parts of the west coast of Skane, seems to be entirely 

 wanting on that part of the coast where A. stelleriana 

 grows. If this be so in the other European stations, it 

 might be possible that A. maritima, a later immigrant, has 

 gradually supplanted A. stelleriana- in the localities more 

 congenial to the former, 



In the July of 1895, while walking along the sandy 

 margin of Marazion Bay, near Penzance, during a dense 

 sea mist, I hurriedly gathered a specimen of what I at first 

 thought was a maritime form of A. absinthium, but which, 

 on my return to Oxford, I saw was not that species, but 

 which Mr. Arthur Bennett agreed with me in believing 

 to be A. stelleriana ; and this, on comparison with a 

 Kamtschatka specimen, proved to be correct. In Corn- 

 wall it grew with Ergnginm in the Psamma zone, but 

 unfortunately its occurrence on this piece of seacoast can 

 have but little weight in supporting its claims to be con- 

 sidered a native species, since so many plants which we 

 know are not native are found along this particular portion 

 of coast, although its occurrence in a wild (and by this I do 



