352 Canon A. ]\I. Novman — Notes on the 



There are no bindweerls {Convohiihts) , no sow-thistles 

 (Sonchiis), no annual species of Veronica, and the only 

 Chenopodiwn is C. album ; and the common thistles of onr 

 fields — Carduns nutans, ucanthoides, lanceolatiis, and arvensis 

 ■ — are not to be found. 



Tlic rapidity of fjrowth which takes place in Arctic regions 

 cannot fail to strike the stranger as truly wonderful. A 

 spot, barren and brown when first seen, will a fortnight later 

 be vivid with green clothing and bright with flowers and 

 waving rushes and grasses. But the healtbiness and vigour 

 of plants grown in pots within doors struck me as still more 

 remarkable. At the furthest and darkest corners of rooms, 

 where in England they would at once pine and die, they 

 flourish and flower as vigorously as they would with us when 

 grown in a sunny south window. This is no doubt accounted 

 for by the fact that in the comparatively dark corners they 

 receive during the twenty to twenty-four hours of daylight 

 as much invigorating stimulus as they would do in England 

 when subjected to a much stronger light in our shorter 

 days. In the long rest of the winter darkness plants no 

 doubt also lay up a force of strength ready to burst forth at 

 the first awakening from their sleep. 



In 1860 Sir Joseph D. Hooker published, in Trans. Linn. 

 Soc. vol. xxiii. pp. 251-348, an exhaustive paper, '^ Outlines of 

 Distribution of Arctic 1 lants.^^ He there estimates the total 

 number of flowering plants found within the eircumpolar 

 Arctic circle to be 702 species. Of these he gives no less 

 than 61G as occurring in Arctic Europe, 586 of which he 

 regards as of Scandinavian origin, and the small remaining 

 30 as of American or Asiatic origin. Zoologists no longer 

 regard the Arctic Circle as the boundary of the Arctic fauna, 

 but take an isothermal line. Now if we take as our isothermal 

 line that which indicates an average temperature throughout 

 the year of the freezing-point, 32° Fahr., we shall find that 

 the whole of Western, by far the larger part of Central, 

 and all Northern NorMay except the extreme north-east, 

 where I w^as working, have a higher temperature. "With 

 such a boundary a very large number of the species regarded 

 by Hooker as Arctic would be excluded. On the other hand, 

 if the same isothermal line be followed across America and 

 Asia, it will be found very far south of the Arctic Circle in 

 America, passing about 50° W. through the most southern 

 extremity of Hudson's Bay, and in Asia, in about the 

 same latitude, crossing Lake Baikal. Using, then, this 

 isothermal, it would follow that almost the whole of Norway 

 would be excluded, while in America and Asia vast regions 



