14 H. G. SIMMONS. [SEC. ARCT. EXP. FRAM 



Isle a very nearly representing the true flora. Now we find for Gape 

 Vera 50 species, which to probably not a few might be added by a 

 closer survey than that which I could make during my short visit. For 

 Gull Cove the number is 34 and for Falcon Cliff 62, both perhaps some- 

 what too small. From North Kent I have brought home 50 species of 

 mosses. 



Now the question is to be approached : how have the plants of the 

 two small islands reached thither over the open strait? It is especially 

 to be noted that there are none of them that have fruits or seeds adapted 

 for spreading by means of wind, if we except the grasses. Even Dryas 

 inteyrifolia, which is so commonly distributed along both coasts of 

 Jones Sound (also at Cape Vera) and which has so well-developed a 

 flying apparatus, is absent from both islands. This does not speak in 

 favour of attributing too great influence to the wind in transporting seeds. 

 The grasses, indeed, especially Alopecurus alpinus, might have come 

 over by aid of the wind, but they may also have used another mode 

 of conveyance. Most of the plants have small, light seeds (Saxifraga 

 oppositifolia and S. groenlandica, Papaver, the Drabae, Cochlearia, 

 Cerastium) and may, perhaps, be transported by the wind, but for 

 Saxifraga cernua this mode of conveyance becomes less acceptable, 

 as generally it does not fruit but is vegetatively propagated. The 

 bulbillae of this plant cannot be transported through the air. It appears 

 at the first glance that the flowering plants of the islands are nearly 

 all such as commonly grow around the gulls' nests in the rookeries of 

 the mainland. 



The spores of mosses are, of course, easily transported by wind 

 over even far greater distances than those here in question, and thus 

 we might easily find an explanation of the migration of those plants to 

 the islands, if all mosses were commonly found in fruit in the adjacent 

 lands. But now the case in fact is, that most mosses in arctic lands 

 are always, or nearly always, found sterile. BRYHN, Bryophyta, p. 1, 

 also mentions that relatively few mosses fruit in Ellesmereland and 

 elsewhere in our field, the acrocarpic musci foliosi principally; whereas 

 capsules are found only exceptionally in the pleurocarpic species. Out 

 of the 45 species found in one or both of the two islands, 23 are such 

 as are specially mentioned by BRYHN as found fruiting in my collec- 

 tions from Ellesmereland or other adjacent regions, and concerning 4 

 more, he gives no special notice as to fruiting or sterile state, but as 

 they belong to the acrocarpic species, in part to such as are generally 

 found fruiting, we may perhaps reckon 27. Among those explicitly 



