Rev. W. A. Leighton on the Lichens of Spitzbergen. 439 
LIII.—Notule Lichenologice. No. XVIII. 
By the Rey. W. A. Lutcnron, B.A., F.L.S. 
Dr. Tu. M. Fries has, in his latest published work, ‘ Lichenes 
Spitsbergenses,’ 4to, 1867, furnished us with a comprehensive 
enumeration and description of all the Lichens detected in those 
northern regions up to the present time. In the preface he 
describes the country as consisting of lofty mountains rising 
immediately from the shores of the icy sea, having their sum- 
mits clothed with eternal ice and snow, no woods or grassy 
meadows decorating their precipitous sides. The marine beaches 
and very bases of the mountains alone present any vegetation. 
Of flowering plants ninety-five species have been gathered, of 
which the.Saxifrage constitute a tenth part. (See Malmgren in 
Vet. Ak. Forhandl. 1862, pp. 229-268.) These inhospitable 
regions, however, appear to have afforded in ages long past 
herbs and trees, as is evident from their vestiges preserved in 
the rocks, and whose determination Heer has attempted in Vet. 
Ak. Forhandl. 1866, n. 6. 
Wahlenberg says, “ Lichenes ultimam vegetationem in ultima 
terra constituunt.” Accordingly these comparatively lower or- 
ganisms have not been overlooked by the voyagers and natu- 
ralists who have explored these coasts. Solander (in Phipps’s 
Voyage towards the North Pole, 1774) mentions eleven species 
of lichens. Rob. Brown (in Scoresby’s Arctic Regions, 1820) 
enumerates nineteen species. Sir W. J. Hooker (in Parry’s 
North Pole, 1828) names twenty-three species, with localities. 
In 1827, B. M. Keilhau collected in Beeren Island, Stans 
Foreland, and around Sydcap, thirty-two lichens, which Chr. 
Sommerfelt described in Mag. Naturvid. And. Rekke 1st B. 
2nd H. pp. 232-252 (1833), and the specimens of which are 
preserved in Sommerfelt’s Herb. in the Bot. Mus. of Christiania. 
In 1838-39 Vahl, attached to Gaimard’s French Expedition, 
collected in Bel Sound and Magdalena Bay sixty-three species 
of lichens, besides certain varieties now regarded as species, 
which A. E. Lindblom described in Bot. Not. 1839-40, pp. 153- 
158. 
Since then, in 1857-1861 and 1864, A. E. Nordenskidld, 
K. Chydenius, and A. J. Malmgren have, in three successive 
explorations, collected a large amount of lichens, which form 
the basis of the present work. 
The explorations have been limited chiefly to the northern 
and western shores, the southern and eastern ones having been 
scarcely searched. 
There are no species entirely peculiar to the Spitzbergen 
islands, the lichens being similar to those of northern Scandi- 
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