INTRODUCTION. 



Shortly after his return from the expedition with the "Fram," Dr. Nan- 

 sen informed me that when in Franz Josef Land he had collected a goodly 

 number of fossil plants, and requested me to examine them. This offer I 

 could not withstand, though fully occupied with other work, especially as for 

 my work in connection with the fossil Jurassic flora of Spitsbergen, it was parti- 

 cularly interesting to become acquainted with the Jurassic flora of Franz Josef 

 Land. Having given a reply in the affirmative to Dr. Nansen's request, the 

 material he had collected arrived in such good time that I was enabled to 

 give a short account of it in the book Nansen published describing his 

 voyage. Unfortunately there is a misstatement in "Farthest North". When 

 first examining the material received, I believed that I had discovered, among 

 the ferns, fragments of an Onychiopsis, a supposition which, however, after 

 a subsequent examination proved erroneous. A correction forwarded in good 

 time by Nansen to the English publisher was not attended to, and conse- 

 quently, the error is still to be found in "Farthest North". In the Swedish 

 and Norwegian editions it is, however, corrected. 



There is no need for me to dwell on the occurrence of these fossil plants, 

 Dr. Nansen himself having given a full description thereof. Both Nansen 

 and Dr. Kcettlitz are of opinion that the plant-bearing strata must be con- 

 sidered as interstratified between two different tiers of basalt (old lava flows), 

 an opinion which is confirmed by the analogous conditions on King Charles 



