﻿It may be further remarked that the Scanian and Danish form 

 differs in several respects from that which grows in Kamchatka, — 

 to judge, at least, by the fragments that I have seen from the last- 

 mentioned country, — and comes nearer the form cultivated in 

 Europe. Perhaps this may depend on the great variability of the 

 species; witness the fact that the form represented in Refwjium 

 Botanicum, t. 203, which is probably taken from cultivated speci- 

 mens, differs not only from the Scanian form, but also from the 

 Kamchatkan. On the other hand, should it appear, on a more 

 thorough comparison than I have been able to institute, that the 

 Scanian form constantly differs from the Kamchatkan and resembles 

 the cultivated form, this is no decisive proof that the Scanian form 

 derives its origin from the latter. For the divergencies that may 

 exist between the cultivated and the Kamchatkan form must be 

 assumed to have arisen under the influence of the climatic relations 

 tbat obtain in Europe ; and these climatic relations, it must again 

 be assumed, would have had the same effect on the species had it 

 been wild in Europe. 



Finally, the very great distance between Kamchatka and the 

 west coast of Europe must quite naturally cause the botanist great 

 hesitation in regarding this plant as original, i.e., diffused without 

 the direct or indirect agency of -man to the coasts of Europe. On 

 this head it should be borne in mind, however, that several other 

 plants, even species of the genus Artemisia, have an almost equally 

 extensive and a greatly broken range. Thus A. laciniata Willd, 

 occurs in several parts of the island of Oland, situated in the Baltic 

 and well;known for its highly interesting flora, and in a few 

 localities in Central Germany, whence there is a gap in its range 

 right to the Altai Mountains, from which locality it is distributed 

 all the way to Amur. The extension of A. mp * ris L. is similar, 

 though not so dismembered. Furthermore, it is hardly improbable 

 that A. StdUriana may grow, though its stations are unknown, in 

 several places on the sandy banks of Siberian and North American 

 rivers. It has escaped observation for a period at all events not 

 very limited on the west coast of Skane, and this can happen much 

 more readily within regions so extensive and, comparatively 

 speaking, so desolate. 



I am inclined to believe that A. SteiUsriana belongs to that 

 element of European vegetation which I have termed (in Acta 

 Universalis Lundensis, 1866) the Altai flora, and which is almost 

 identical with the steppe flora of later writers. This flora has a 

 circumpolar range, without being arctic. The representatives of 

 the Altai flora are now restricted in Europe to widely isolated 

 localities. I have endeavoured to show (I.e.) that, after the Glacial 

 Period, this flora immigrated from Central Asia into Europe in the 

 track of the Arctic flora, and that it was afterwards supplanted 

 more and more in Europe by more southern elements, belonging to 

 the Caucasian, Mediterranean, and Atlantic flora. One of the 

 most typical representatives of the Altai flora is Potentilla fruticosa 

 L., whose area extends from Canada and Newfoundland, right 

 across the northern tracts of North America to the Behring 



