Ixiv INTRODUCTION. 
left Mr. Smith to pursue alone his researches, in the moun- 
tains of Tellemarck, where he discovered a great number of 
mosses, and other new plants, which gained him celebrity 
among all the botanists of the North. In 1812 he made a se- 
cond excursion across the mountains of Tellemarck and Hal- 
lingdal, which were but little known, even to the natives of 
Norway ; he ascertained their heights, examined their pro- 
ductions, made a number of curious meteorological observa- 
tions, and, in short, traversed those solitary regions not only 
as a botanist, but asa natural philosopher ; and the narra- 
tive which he has given of his proceedings, to use the words 
of his friend Von Buch, “ will always be considered as one 
of the most curious and instructive documents of physical 
geography.” He has therein exemplified and explained the 
immense influence of the proximity of the sea,and the sur- 
prising difference, resulting from it, between the tempera- 
ture of the interior of the continent, and of the coast, and its 
effects on the different products of the vegetable world ; the 
limits of perpetual snow on the sides of different moun- 
tains, and a great variety of interesting facts, connected 
with the geography and physiology of plants. 
The Patriotic Society of Norway, struck with the zeal 
and indefatigable industry of Mr. Smith, engaged him at 
its own expense to undertake another scientific expedition 
into the clusters of mountains, which, about the 62™ pa- 
rallel of latitude, separate the valleys of Walders, of Guld- 
transdal, and of Romsdal, whose height and extent were 
unknown, and many parts of them untrod even by the 
hunters of the reindeer. By this excursion the Norwegian 
Flora was greatly extended, and from it the geography of 
plants acquired fresh facts at once exceedingly curious and 
