42 I'RELIMINARY INQUIRIES. 



Iceland, both large islands, the one with a flora limited to ninety-three species, the other apparently 

 witliovit an indigenous mammal. In the former, the most remarkable fact in favour of the view is 

 that Spitzbergen appears to have two, if not three, floras represented on its shores, — literally its 

 shores, — ^because the interior is a pile of snow and ice where nothing can live.* The flora of the west 

 coast has been chiefly borrowed from Greenland ; that on the north coast has a considerable flavoui* of 

 the Melville and Parry Islands species, there being, besides half a dozen species peculiar to Mel- 

 ville Island, no less than 58 out of the 83 composmg the flora of that island found in Spitz- 

 bero-en, and chiefly on its north coast, and about 53 out of 12-4 species from Eastern Asia. It is 

 not said whether these latter are chiefly found on the eastern coast or not. If it should prove so, 

 we shoidd then have each coast with a predominance of species from the country lying opposite 

 it, which certainly would look something like colonization by immigration by some such means. 

 On the other hand. Mammals, such as the Reindeer and Hare, could have come neither by 

 flotsam nor jetsam. It is possible that they might have crossed the ice, particidarly if nmch land 

 lies between Spitzbergen and Melville Island ; but former contiguity or continuity of land seems the 

 more probable explanation. As to Iceland, its flora does not seem to have any of these pecidiarities, 

 and besides, although only amounting to 445 phanerogamous species, it is still greatly too large to 

 allow of our supjjosing it all to have come over sea. 



Before leaving these frozen regions I may remark that their floras furnish confirmation of 

 the justice of my view of the origin of sj>ecies on one point, viz., that without change of condition no 

 new species can be produced. There can hardly be any condition more constant than continual 

 cold ; and we find in conformity with what we might expect from such a character, that the species 

 which are frigid in their constitution exist without change in Greenland, the Alps, the Him- 

 malayahs and Andes, while those of more temperate character have disappeared in some localities 

 and become changed in others, — the change probablj^ being due to interventions of more moderate 

 climate. The Greenland and Spitzbergen species are all of an arctic character, and have come 

 back with and kept pace with the cold, consequently we should not expect to obtain any change or 

 development of new species out of them, and so it is. With the exception of a single insig- 

 nificant new grass (Catabrosa Vilfoidea) in Spitzbergen, not a single species has been foimd 

 either in Spitzbergen or Greenland which was not already known as occurring elsewhere. 



* Malmgren says, " The summer's heat melts the snow is an old sea-shore, and that Spitzbergen is gradually 



and fits the soil for its scanty vegetation only on a narrow rising above the sea. This naiTow ledge of so compara- 



strip of land, which .stretches along the coast between the tively recent a geological age, supports the great propoi-tion 



sea and the nearest mountain ridge. The mountains of the vegetation ; only a third of the species are found 



seldom rise precipitously from the sea, thei-e is generally on the north coast at a greater height than 300 feet above 



such a narrow terrace of about one-eighth to half a mile the sea." According to his view, the flora of Spitzbergen 



in width. Its composition and the sub-fossil whale-bones must consequently also be comparatively recent, and still 



and moUusca contained in the uppermost bed of gravel, continuing to increase. — See Malmgren, op. cit. Transla- 



which is 50 to 150 feet above the sea, show that this ledge tion in Seeman's " Journal of Botany," p. 173. 



