HAMILTON SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION 105 



Arctic Europe, and of these 586 are Scandinavian, and this 

 eminent botanist says in his paper on "The Distribution of 

 Arctic Plants" that the Scandinavian flora is present in every 

 latitude of the globe, and is the onl}^ one that is so. This 

 would seem, at first sight, to point to Scandinavia as the 

 Centre of Creation for the Arctic lauds ; and it may now be 

 termed the chief centre of preservation within the Arctic 

 Circle, owing perhaps partly to its more broken conformation 

 and partly to that warmer climate which, while it now admits 

 species which some might object to being placed among 

 Arctic plants, was during the glacial period a means of 

 preservation of some colder species which were everywhere 

 else expelled or destroyed. 



I must now, however, say something about the various 

 agencies existing for the dispersion of the seeds of plants. 

 Many of those seeds are supplied with the means of wide 

 disemination. To begin with the Winds ; a great number of 

 seeds are furnished with downy and feathery appendages, 

 enabling them when ripe to float in the air and to be wafted 

 easily to great distances by the most gentle breeze, 

 Dandelion, Thistle and Goatsbeard. Other plants are fitted 

 for dispersion by means of an attached wing, as in the case of 

 the fir tree, the maple, the lime and others, so that they are 

 caught up by the wind as they fall from the tree and are 

 carried to a distance. As winds often prevail for days and 

 weeks together in the same direction, these means of trans- 

 portation may sometimes be without limits. 



It has been found that a great numerical proportion of 

 the exceptions to the limitation of species to certain quarters 

 of the globe occur in the various tribes of cryptogaraic 

 plants. As the germs of plants of this class, such as ferns, 

 mosses, fungi and lichens, consist of an impalpable powder, 

 the particles of which are scarcely visible to the naked eye, 

 there is no difiiculty in accounting for their being dispersed 

 throughout the atmosphere and carried to every point of the 

 globe where there is a station for them. 



Almost every lichen brought home by one of the first 

 Antarctic expeditions, amounting to over 200 species, was 



