duci X 
16 SHORT NOTES AND QUERIES. 
especially on tracts of wet mud formed by the water from melted sno 
slopes which is unable to penetrate the frozen lower stratum of 
ground. On the hills (1000-3000 ft.) the air is warmer at the summits 
than below, so that no highest limit of plants exists. Saxifrages, Silene, 
Dryas, and other plants occur on these summits, and on a peak 7000 
dently been washed down from the mountains, as is the case with o 
alpine plants, such as Arabis petrea and Alchemilla alpina, which do not, 
however, quite reach the seashore Mr. Kingsley's steipi must 
in height. These exceptions being made, Mr. Kingsley's question 1e: 
solves itself into the much simpler one, * How is it that these. px 
seashore, and common on mountains and by rivers ^ 
* Probably an Arctic variety of P. eeruleum. “It is very remarkable that th 
lant inhabits no part of Greenland but the cast coast only, and at à very 
tude.” —Hooker, “ Arctic Plants,” Linn. Soc, Trans. xxiii. 334. 
