486 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [voL. 48 
All of these, except J. atlantica, have been found in Great Britain 
and Ireland and no less than seven, or 25 per cent., are thus far 
known only from western Norway, Scotland and Ireland (two also 
from the Fer6es and one as yet only from the latter and Norway). 
Several of the others extend only to western France. 
Blytt also distinguished in the Norwegian flora another element 
which he termed specifically the “ Arctic” plants, generally sup- 
posed to have entered the Scandinavian peninsula gradually from 
the south, immediately following up the melting of the great ice 
cap. Ina recent paper, however, Professor N. Wille’ has shown 
most conclusively that this theory is not borne out by the facts and 
that the “ Arctic”’ flora, so far from being of homogeneous origin, 
consists of at least two very distinct elements, one which is of 
decided Siberian relationship and which entered northern Norway 
from the east via the Kola peninsula, and another which he be- 
lieves to have come from Greenland via an Iceland-British-Nor- 
wegian land bridge and to have survived the last glaciation on an 
ice-free coast along western and northern Norway. He conse- 
quently reaches a conclusion agreeing in many points with that of 
Dr. Hansen (see antea, p. 461). He sums up his results as follows 
(p. 337) : “‘ The facts at hand, therefore, seem to me to indicate that 
during the last ice-period there lived in Norway a high-arctic vegeta- 
tion on an ice-free coast which must have extended as far south as 
the Sognefjord [61°]. Later on several species of high-arctic 
plants, which in the course of time immigrated into northern Scandi- 
navia from Russia and Siberia, have pushed southward to a lesser 
or greater extent. As the land ice retreated from the south and 
east after the conclusion of the last glacial epoch a subarctic rather 
than an arctic vegetation followed from Sweden into southeastern 
Norway.” 
The element of the west Norwegian flora, which it may be con- 
venient to designate as the “ Arctatlantic’’ element, must conse- 
quently have come: from the west, from Scotland, and it is highly 
significant to note that Wille, whose studies of the fresh-water alge 
of the Ferdes have been quoted in defense of their reaching these 
islands across the sea? now admits the probability of a land bridge 
(p. 318) and the insufficiency of explaining the presence of the 
Arctatlantic element as a whole upon the theory of accidental dis- 
‘Om Indvandringen af det Arktiske Floraelement til Norge, in Nyt Mag. 
Naturv., XLII, 1905, pp. 315-338. 
* See postea, p. 490. 
