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



if doubts are not to arise in the mind of one who has had opportunities 

 of forming a tolerably well-based opinion about the flora of those regions. 

 The first list of the plants collected during the expedition, is given in 

 NARES, Narrative, where OLIVER has enumerated the flowering plants 

 from Ellesmereland, and J. D. HOOKER has given some notes about the 

 relations and peculiarities of the flora, to which I shall have to come 

 back later on. Afterwards HART himself gave a detailed record of the 

 flora, with accounts about the distribution of each separate species 

 (Bot. Br. Pol. Exp.). He also gives some notes about the vegetation of 

 the places visited, beginning with some Danish Greenland ports and 

 further on Cape York and Foulke Fjord which latter is represented as 

 "this most interesting of all our havens". I can fully agree with him 

 in this view, as also in his conjecture that more remains to be found 

 there, notwilhstanding the Foulke Fjord list has now, after my two short 

 excursions at the place, become by far the largest of any N. W. Green- 

 land district of the same extent. 



Further to the north HART visited Hannah Island and Bessels Bay. 

 Among the plants from the latter locality he especially mentions Poa 

 alpina, which is, however, doubtless due to a wrong identification of a form of 

 P. cenisia, as no specimen of the former exists in the London collec- 

 tions. Polaris Bay was visited by HART in May, when only few plants 

 were discernible, and by COPPINGER in July and August. This station 

 is said to be rather poor in plant-life (for instance only two Saxifragae 

 and no Cyperaceae), and HART is inclined to attribute this to the cir- 

 cumstance that the climate is severer there than on the west side of the 

 Channel. That may be so, but 1 am more inclined to think that it is 

 caused by the geological nature of the soil, the hard limestone forming 

 a very poor ground. The entire list of Polaris Bay contains only 

 twenty-two species, or in fact only nineteen when those are exluded 

 which are either wrongly determined, or cannot be upheld as separate 

 (Papaver alpinum, Drdba rupestris, Dryas octopetala). I am hardly 

 inclined to think that this list is complete if it is to hold good for a 

 wider range; but I have indeed seen small districts much further south 

 in the limestone region of Ellesmereland having an equally poor vege- 

 tation. 



The GREELY expedition did not contribute much to our knowledge of 

 the Greenland flora, as its principal field of work fell to the west; still 

 we are indebted to LOCKWOOD and BRAINARD for some plants from the 

 northern-most points in the world where collections have been made 

 (what the collections from the latest Danish East Greenland expedition 



