REVIEWS 



A Summer in Greenland. By A. C. Seward, Cambridge Univer- 

 sity Press, 1922. 8vo, pp. 100, pis. 47, maps 2. 



This is a charming Uttle book by a very capable student of ancient 

 and modern plant life. The setting of the story is one of unique interest, 

 present and past, physical and biological. The points of interest are 

 many and are skilfully touched. Naturally they center where the 

 author's competency is greatest, on the present and past plant life, 

 especially as West Greenland is biologically the most unique of all 

 Arctic regions. 



The treatment of the present flora goes much beyond enumeration, 

 classification, and similar formal and statistical matters, and touches 

 upon adaptations, migrations, and relations that concern the life and 

 death of plants in their battle with conditions that are inhospitable to 

 the casual view, but which are not without their advantages to organisms 

 that have succeeded in seizing upon these and using them. 



The author's comparisons of arctic and of tropical modes of growth 

 bring into vivid contrast the struggle for life when it is against adverse 

 physical conditions, and the scarcely less severe struggle for life when 

 it is against an overstress of biologic competition. 



The author brings out sharply the great contrast between the 

 development of plants in the Arctic and in the Antarctic regions respec- 

 tively. The passage adds so much to the contrasts cited in the climatic 

 paper on an earlier page of this number of the Journal that it is here 

 quoted: 



Not a single flowering plant has been discovered within the Antarctic 

 Circle. The most southerly representative of the flowering plants, over four 

 hundred of which occur in Greenland, is a grass (Deschampia antarctica) which 

 was found in the sub-Antarctic region and reaches its southern limit in lat. 

 62° S., a position corresponding to that of the Faroe Islands and the south of 

 Finland in the northern hemisphere [pp. 71-72]. 



Other statements of the book are very opportune at this time when 

 there is a disposition in certain quarters to discredit the conclusions 

 reached long ago by Heer, Etheridge, and other early students, that 

 strangely mild climates prevailed in the polar regions in certain geological 

 periods, and the similar conclusions reached more recently on the basis 



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