4 BOTANICAL RESULTS OF THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION. 



occurrences in the field. The difficulty of laboratory accommodation in the isolated 

 Antarctic regions is naturally great, but not nearly so great as is generally supposed. 

 Various expeditions which have recently wintered in the south have shown that the 

 climatic conditions, though not exactly as favourable as in the north, offer no serious 

 inconvenience to an ordinary robust constitution and cheerful disposition, even though 

 one is not prepared to rough it in the manner of the geographical explorer. And, 

 furthermore, it should be remembered that there are at the present time several 

 habitable dwellings within the regions of south polar ice which have been erected by 

 one or other of the expeditions of the past ten years. Of these the house at Scotia 

 Bay, South Orkneys, is permanently inhabited as an Argentine Meteorological 

 Observatory, while that at Wandel Island has been, or shortly will be, taken possession 

 of for a similar purpose. Thus it will be seen that laboratory accommodation on a 

 small scale in the Antarctic regions is far from impracticable, and should not be a 

 matter of any very great cost. Most of these stations, it may be remarked, are not very 

 far to the south ; but that is a distinct advantage, for while all are within the veritable 

 polar regions and experience the real Antarctic climate, they escape in very large 

 measure the long night and its attendant drawbacks, and, most important consideration 

 of all, they are readily accessible, so that a relieving ship should experience little 

 difficulty in gaining all or any of them every summer. The Danes have now established 

 in north polar regions, on Disco Island, a fully equipped biological laboratory, and the 

 extreme desirability of a similar station in south polar regions need not be further 

 urged. But in the meantime, until this larger project can be put into execution, it 

 would be most desirable that a biologist should be attached to each of these Antarctic 

 observatories, year by year, though, of course, as the number of inhabitants at each 

 observatory must be very strictly limited, he would combine his biological studies with 

 the duties of a meteorological observer. 



The most striking feature of the Antarctic flora is, of course, its poverty compared 

 with that of the Arctic. Thus the Arctic regions support about four hundred species 

 of flowering plants, while the Antarctic regions support but two, and even these can 

 hardly be said to flourish. The reasons which bring about this extreme contrast 

 between north and south is one of the most interesting biological problems that awaits 

 solution in these regions. 



The amount of light available is, of course, the same in north and south at corre- 

 sponding latitudes, and yet the contrast between the two vegetations is even more 

 marked when one remembers that in Spitsbergen, in 79 N., the ground is bright in 

 summer with a hundred species of flowering plants, while at the South Orkneys, in only 

 61" S., there is not a single species. In Grant Land, in 81-82 N., in three localities, 

 Peary collected 57 mosses and 7 hepatics a greater number than at present known from 

 the whole of the Antarctic regions south of 60 S. 1 Snow is probably not much more 



1 "Ad cognitionem Bryophytorum itrcticorum contributiones sparsse," M. Bryhn, Vidcnsk. Selsk. Fordhandl. 

 (C'hristiania), 1908, No. 6. 



