
Fune 22, 1871 | 
contribution to systematic botany of much importance has ap- 
are in Denmark since those mentioned 4 my Address of 
I 5 
There exists no general Danish Fauna ; but I have a rather 
long list of detached works and essays from which the Danish 
inhabitants of the different classes of animals may be collected. 
Of these the most recent are Collin’s Batrachia, in Kroyer’s 
** Tidsskrift”? for 1870, and Mérch’s marine Mollusca, pub- 
lishing in the “* Videnskabelige Meddelelser” for the present 
ear. 
With regard to Iceland, the only works mentioned are Steen- 
strup’s terrestrial mammals, or rather mammal, of Iceland, in the 
** Videnskabelige Meddelelser” for 1867 ; and Moérch’s Mollusca 
in the sime journal for 1868. C. Miiller’s account of the b rds of 
Iceland and the Faroe islands dates from 1862, and Liitken’s of 
the Echinoderms from 1857, and I find no mention of any special 
account of the insects of the is!and; whilst in botany, C. C. 
Babington has given us, in the eleventh volume of our Linnean 
journal, an exvellent revision of its flora, the phzenogamic portion 
of which may now he considered as having been very fairly 
investigated ; and FE, Rostrup, in the fourth volume of the Tds- 
skrift of the Botanical Society of Copenhagen, has enumerated 
the plants of the Faroe Islands. 
The Scandinavian peninsula is, on several accounts, of great 
interest to the biologist. It includes a lofty and extensive 
mountain-tract, with a climate less severe than that of most parts 
of the northern belt ar similar la itudes, and the uniformity of the 
geological formation is broken by the limestone districts of Scania. 
It thus forms a great centre of preservation for organic races 
beween the wide-spread tracts of desolation to the east and the 
ocean on the west, and has therefore been treated as a centre of 
creation, whence a Scandinavian flora and fauna has spread in 
various directions. As the home of Linnzus it may also be 
considered as classical ground for systematic biology, the pursuit 
of which is now being carried on with spirit, as evidenced by 
such names as Holmgren, Kinberg, Liljeborg, Malm, Malm- 
gren, G. O. Sars, Stal, Torell, and others in zoology; 
and Agardh, Andersson, Areschoug, Fries, Hartmann, and 
others in botany. Two of the academies to whose publications 
Linnzus contributed, those of Upsala and Stockholm, continue 
to issue their Transactions and Proceedings ; and to these are 
now added the memoirs published by the University of Lund. 
They lost Linnzeus’s own collections, and the Zoological Museum 
at Upsala, when I saw it many years since, was peor, that of 
Stockholm better, and in excell-nt order. In the herbaria, 
Thunbery’s and Afzelius’s collections are deposited at Upsala, 
and Swariz’s at Stockholm, where the herbarium of the 
Academy of Sciences has been of late years considerably in- 
creased under the care of Dr. Andersson. 
The Scandinavian Fauna and Flora have been generally well 
investigated. The numerous Floras published of late years show 
considerable attention on the part of the general public. I 
observe that Hartmann’s Handbook is at its tenth edition ; 
Andersson has published 500 woodcut figures of the commoner 
plants, taken chiefly from Fitch’s illustrations of my British 
Handbook ; and my lists contain many papers on Swedish Cryp- 
togams. The relation of the Scandinavian vegetation to that of 
other countries has also been specially treated of by Zetterstedt, 
- who compared it with that of the Pyrenees, and by Areschoug, 
Andersson, Ch. Martins, and others, as alluded to in more 
detail in my Address of 1869. Many works have suc- 
ceeded each other on the Vertebrate Fauna since the days of 
Linnzeus ; amongst which those of Liljeborg as to Vertebrata in 
general and of Sundeyall as to Bird~ are still in progress. The 
Crustacea, Mollu-ca, and lower animals have been the 
subjects of numerous papers, the marine and freshwater faunas 
having been more especially investigared by the late M. Sars and 
by G. O. Sars; and Th. Thorell, in the Upsala Transactions, 
has given an elaborate review of the European genera of spiders, 
evidently a work of great care, preceded by apposite remirks on 
their generic classification, and a general comparison of the 
Arachnoid faunze of Scandinavia and Britain, all in the English 
- language although published in Sweden. This work, however, 
does not extend to species, beyond naming a type (by which I 
trust is meant an example, not the type) of each genus ; nor is 
the geographical range of the several genera given, There ap- 
pears to be no general work on Scandinavian insects 
The fauna and flora of Spitzbergen have specially occupied 
Swedi-h naturalists. To the accounts of the Vertebrata by 
Malmgren, and of the Lichens by T. M. Fries, have now been 
added, in recent parts of the Transactions or Proceedings of the 
NATURE 
woe I 


151 
Royal Swedish Academy, the Insects by Holmgren, the Mollusca 
by Morch, the Phzenogamic Flora by T. M. Fries, and the Alga 
by Agardh. ; 
An excellent and elaborate monograph of a small but widely 
spread genus of Plants, entitled ‘* Prodromus Monographize 
Georum,” by N. J. Scheutz, has appeared in the last part of 
the Transactions of the Academy of Upsala. Several interesting 
features in the geographical distribution of some of the species 
are pointed out, amongst which one of the most curious is the 
almost perfect identity of the G. coceieum from the Levant and 
the G, chilense from South Chile, the differences being such only 
as would scarcely have been set down as more than varieties 
had both come from the same country. The whole memoir 
is in the Latin language; the specific diagnoses are rather long, 
but the observations under each section and species point out 
the connection with and chief differences from the nearest 
allies. 
The whole of the botanical literature published in or relating 
to Sweden has been regularly recorded in annual catalogues, in- 
serted by T. O. B. N. Krok in the ‘‘ Botaniske Notiser” of 
Stockholm. 
The chief interest in the biology of Russia consists in its com- 
pirative uniformity over an enormous expanse of territory. 
Extending over more than 130 degrees from East to West, and 
above 20 degrees from South to North, without the interposition 
of any great geological break in mountain,* or ocean, all changes 
in flora or fauna, in the length and breadth of this vast area are 
gradual ; whilst the mountains which bound it to the south and 
to the east, and the glacial characters of the northern shores, 
offer to the Russian naturalist several more or less distinct biolo- 
gical types, such as the Caucasian, the Central Asiatic, the Mant- 
churian, and the Arctic, all blending into the great Europeo- 
Asiatic type, and the three first-named, at least apparently, con- 
stituting great centres of preservation. By the careful discrimi- 
nation of the various races which give to each of these types its 
distinctive character, the study o/ their mutual relations, of theareas 
which each one occupies without modification, of the complicated 
manner in which these several areas are interwoven, of the gradual 
changes which distance may produce, of the cessation of onerace 
and the substitution of another without apparent physical cause, 
the Russian, even without travelling out of his own country, 
can contribute, more than any other observer, valuable materials 
for the general history of races. In botany I have on 
former occasions referred to Ledebour’s ‘‘ Flora Rossica” 
as the most extensive complete flora of a country which 
we possess, and to the numerous papers by which it has been 
supplemented. Several of these are still in progress, chiefly in 
the bulletin of the Society of Naturalists of Moscow, and I have 
notes of local floras and lists from various minor publications. 
The last received volume of the Memoirs of the Academy of 
Petersburgh include the botanical portion of Schmidt’s travels in 
the Amur-land and Sachzlin, in which the geographical relations 
of the flora are very fully treated of ; and the first part of a very 
elaborate ‘‘ Flora Caucasi” by the late F. J. Ruprecht, which 
may be more properly designated Commentaries on the Caucasian 
Plants than a flora in the ordinary sense of the word. It is an 
enumeration of species, with frequent observations on affinities, 
and a very detailed exposi‘ion of stations in the Caucasus, but 
without any reference to the dist ibution beyond that region; above 
300 large 4to pages only include the Polypetalze preceding Legu- 
minosze, and the lamented death of the author will probably pre- 
vent the completion of the work. N. Kaufmann, Professor of 
Botany at the University of Moscow, an active botanist of great 
promise, whose death last winter is much deplored by his col- 
leagues, had published a Flora of Moscow in the Russian language, 
which had met with much success. In the zoology of Russia the 
most important recent work is Middendortf’s ‘* Vhierwelt Sibi- 
ras,” analysed in the ‘‘ Zoological Record,” vi. p. 1, which, 
with the previously published descriptive portion and the botany 
of the journey by Trautvetter, Ruprecht, and others, torms a 
valuable exposition of the biologyof N.E. Siberia, a cold and 
inhospitabie tract of country, where organisms, animal as well as 
vegetable, are perhaps poorer in species and poorer in individuals 
than in any other region of equal extent not covered with 
eternal snows. Middendorff’s observations on this poverty of the 

* The celebrated chain of the Oural, which separates Asia from Europe 
is, in the greater part of its length too low, and the ascent too gradual to 
have much influence on the vege: ton. The so-caled ridge between Perm 
and Fkater nburg is, according to Ermonn, not 1600 feet above the level of 
the sea, and rises from land which, for a breadth of above 120 miles, is only 
700 feet lower. 
