DR. LINDSAY ON WEST-GREENLAND LICHENS. 913 
Forms of gracilis are, in the Kew Herbarium, confounded with squamosa, amauro- 
crea, uncialis, pyridata, and furcata*. 
5. C. furcata, Schreb.—Godhayn. In fruit. Some of its forms have been confounded 
with states of gracilis t, uncialis, and rangiferinat, in the Kew Herbarium. 
6. C. rangiferina, L.—Egedesminde. Gives no reaction with potash. Rare and 
sterile in Spitzbergen, according to Th. Fries; but it would appear to be abundant in 
some parts, at least, of Greenland, where it ascends to 200 feet above the sea. CZ. syl- 
vatica is commoner than the type in Spitzbergen, but nowhere plentiful, and always 
sterile (Th. Fries). The extent to which C. rangiferina, in some of its forms, grows in 
Greenland is of interest in connexion with the question of the food of the Reindeer in 
that country. Crantz, in his‘ History of Greenland *$ (1820, vol. i. p. 61), describes what 
is evidently C. rangiferina as **the food of the reindeer in winter; and might, in case 
of necessity, preserve the life of a hungry man." He assigns to this lichen, as well as to 
Cetraria Islandica, an unpleasant taste at first; ** but when chewed and swallowed, they 
have ” (he says) “a sweet flavour like rye." Hares also are said by Crantz (p. 66) to live 
partly on “White Moss " (C. rangiferina). There can be no doubt of the occurrence of 
the reindeer in Greenland; but it does not follow that there is a profusion of ** Reindeer 
Moss,” as it is well known that that animal can and does subsist on a considerable 
variety of other foods. Dr. Brown informs me that “The reindeer food does not 
consist to any great extent of Cladonias in Greenland, as they are rather scarce; but 
of other lichens, all species of grass, shoots of Betula, Vaccinium, Empetrum, &c." | 
He adds, *the reindeer of Greenland is, in my opinion . . . . only a climatie variety 
of the Scandinavian species, and may be characterized as Rangifer tarandus, var. Græn- 
landicus, Kerr (Linn. 1792). It is certainly a fact that C. rangiferina occurs very 
sparingly in the present collection, and equally rarely in the Greenland collections of 
liehens I have examined in Kew or other public herbaria. 
In the Kew Herbarium forms of rangiferina are confounded with states of uncialis 
and furcata. Even Acharius confounded rangiferina with furcata (Coemans). But 
these errors, if errors they be, are quite excusable, and indeed are unavoidable ; for 
rangiferina passes into furcata through pungens and rangiformis. No. 754 Mougeot and 
Nestler’s Exs. is partly referable to furcata (=Lichen pungens, Ach., in fruit). The 
little value of the present unnecessarily elaborate classification of the forms of rangiferina— 
* E.g.in var. surrecta, Flk., according to Coemans, who points out that even Acharius confounded it with eris- 
pata, amaurocrea, &c. t Especially var. corymbosa, Ach. (Coemans). 
i Especially certain brown states thereof; the resemblance is sometimes so close that the two groups are con- 
founded in the Kew Herbarium and all large herbaria. 
$ English translation from the German. 
| In a paper “On the Mammalian Fauna of Greenland” (Proceed. of Zoolog. Soc. London, 1868, pp. 352 and 
355, and Petermann’s Geographische Mittheilungen, 1869, pp. 464 and 465), Dr. Brown Doin out Hist there has 
been a gradual decrease in the number of reindeer in Greenland, in consequence of their indiscriminate slaughter 
for the sake of the skin alone, of which the yearly production was at one time ated 20,000. “I can 
hardly think” (says he) “that . . . reindeer-moss . . . forms any great portion of its subsistence, as that lichen 
is nowhere found in Greenland in such quantity as to afford food for any animal." inpar certain remarks 
in my paper, “ The Lichen-flora of Greenland,” pp. 53-56, Trans. Botanical Society of Edinburgh, fon x. 1869, 
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VOL. XXVII. 
