294 Scientific Results of 



of existing floras over lands now bound fast in perpetual ice, 

 appear to some naturalists to call for vaster changes than can 

 be brought about by a redisposition of the geographical limits 

 of land and sea, and to afford evidence of changes in the 

 direction of the earth's axis to the plane of its orbit, and 

 perhaps of variations in the ellipticity of the orbit itself. 



It has thus been shown that much interest attaches to the 

 Greenland flora, which is far from being exhausted. And 

 besides these general questions, there are others respecting 

 specific subjects, of which our existing knowledge is very 

 imperfect. A great interest attaches to the minute forms of 

 vegetable life which swarm in polar areas, affording food to 

 the cetacese and other marine animals, and which colour the 

 surface of the ocean and its bottom likewise. Many of these 

 forms are common to the Arctic and Antarctic seas, and have 

 actually been far better studied in the latter than in the 

 foz-mer sea. Of land plants the lichens and mosses require 

 much further collection and study, and the Arctic marine 

 flora is most imperfectly known. Ample collections of 

 flowering plants should be made, with a view of testing the 

 variability of species and their distribution ; and observations 

 on the means of transport of land plants by winds, currents, 

 ice, and migrating animals, are very much wanted. 



Zoology. — AVith regard to the specific results hi zoology 

 which may be expected froni the proposed expedition, they 

 are numerous and important. It is now known that the 

 Arctic Ocean teems with life, and that of the more minute 

 organized beings the multitude of kmds is prodigious ; these 

 play a most important part, not only in the economy of 

 organic nature, but in the formation of sedimentary deposits, 

 which in future geological periods will become incorporated 

 with these rock-formations, whose structure has only lately 

 been explained by the joint labours of zoologists and geolo- 

 gists. 



The kinds of these animals, the relations they bear to one 



