156 MAMMALS. 



than to that of Europe, we should have received without surprise the additional fact that its 

 fauna and that of Spitzbergen also bore the American type ; but when we know tliat Greenland 

 bears a flora of a Scandinavian type, while the mammalian fauna of both it and Spitzbergen are 

 more allied to America, the explanation of such a conciu-rence of circumstances becomes beyond 

 measure puzzling, except upon the hypothesis of the geological changes which I liave ah-eady 

 endeavoured to explain. 



No other point of resemblance between America and those lands has until recently been ob- 

 served. Nothing is said to indicate such in Dr. Hooker's essay on the "Arctic Flora;" on the 

 contrary, the flora of Spitzbergen is there treated by him as Scandinavian throughout, and his lists 

 bear him out in doing so. Dr. Malmgren,* however, has made a fresh comi^arison of the plants 

 of Spitzbergen, from a list which his own researches, added to the materials already published 

 by the late Sir W. Hooker and others, have enabled him to make more complete than any that 

 pre\'iously • existed ; and his comparisons show a greater degree of affinity between the flora of 

 Spitzbergen and North America than had previously been supposed. 



According to him, ninety-three phanerogamous j)lauts have been found growing in Spitzbergen, 

 to which two noted by the translator of his paper may be added, making ninety-five, and on a col- 

 lation of the species found in Greenland, in Scandina^da, in Asia east of the Wliite Sea, and in 

 the North American Arctic Islands, Melville's Islands, &c., he arrived at the following conclusions, 

 viz., Firstly, that the Spitzbergen flora is most nearly related to Greenland. Secondly, that 

 the flora of the nortli coast of Spitzbergen (latitude 80° north), is very diSerent from that of 

 the west coast, and is most nearly related to the flora of the islands in Lancaster Sound, Bar- 

 row's Strait, and Melville Somid (latitude 74° north), the two having nearly an equal number of 

 species and almost seventy per cent of them common to both. 



Of the 95 species hitherto found in Spitzbergen, 73 are found on the nortli coast, and 80 on the 

 west coarst, and of the 73, 60 are also found on the west coast. 



The flora of Spitzbergen contains 71 species that are also found in Northern Scandinavia, 

 and 58 that are found in the American Arctic Islands ; but most of these are circumi^olar species, 

 and found both in Scandinavia and North America. The real test of afiinity between Spitzbergen 

 and the North American Islands is that all the 24 species not found in Scandinavia are with the 

 exception of 3, also found in the Arctic- American Islands, and whilst 5 of these are also found 

 on Nova Sembla and the land of the Samoyedes in Northern Asia, and 6 in the Taimyrland, there 

 remain 7, which seem to be found in Greenland as well as Arctic America ; and 6, which are 

 pecidiar to the Arctic- American Islands and Spitzbergen, being according to Malmgren foimd 

 nowhere else. 



The question, therefore, in reality very much depends upon these 6 species ; but before cross- 

 examining them I shall note another fact which may perhaps be brought forward in favour of 

 the American connexion with Spitzbergen, and that is, that there is a possibility of a great land 

 stretching between them, commencing at Gillies' Land, which lies about fifty or sixty miles north- 

 east of Spitzbergen, and ending at Cornwall Land, north of Melville Island. Little is known of 

 this Gillies' Land except that it is a mountain land like Spitzbergen, and much frequented by 

 Wah-us. Mr. Lament thinks it probable that some rolled boulders of red granite which he ob- 



* Newton in "Proc. Zool. Soc," 1864, 493. Foi-li." 1«62, pp. 229-268, translated in Dr. Sccuian's. 



+ Ur. Malmosen in " Olfcrs af Kouigl. Vetenstap Acad- "Journal of Botany," 1864, p. 130. 



