. ^7 



imposing number of 93 flowering plants and 152 cryptogams 

 (mosses and lichens), which resist the most vigorous cold ; 

 making a total of 245. Now 93 flowering plants may, per- 

 haps, strike you as being rather numerous; but I would remind 

 you that Iceland with its bleak climate, though far less in 

 extent than Spitzbergen, numbers 402 species, while Ireland, 

 again still smaller, boasts 960 flowering plants. 



I am not going to weary you with a catalogue of the names 

 of the Spitzbergen plants, suffice it to say, that as in all 

 Northern regions, they consist chiefly of the GraminacecE 

 (grasses), CrucifercB, CaryophyllacecB (pink family), Saxifra- 

 gacecB, and amongst the genera we find D}-aba (Willow Grass), 

 Saxifraga, Ra7iunculus, Caj-ex (Sedge), Poa (Meadow Grass). 

 They are all necessarily perennial, — I say necessarily, because 

 it would be impossible for any annual long to survive in so 

 bleak a district, as a failure in any one year would lead to its 

 utter destruction. You will find that while the Norwegian 

 specimens are smaller than English plants of the same nature, 

 that the Icelandic are smaller than the Norwegian, and the 

 Spitzbergen again are smaller than the Icelandic. Among 

 the Spitzbergen specimens you will find several Saxifrages, 

 one of which f Saxifraga Cernuaj I found under somewhat 

 peculiar circumstances. I was wandering away from my com- 

 panions with my rifle, in search of reindeer, and found myself 

 in a gloomy valley, surrounded with black and jagged rocks ; 

 all around a deathlike silence reigned, and as I wandered on, 

 unconsciously impressed with the solemnity of the scene, but 

 with my thoughts hundreds of miles away, I came suddenly 

 on an open coffin of bleached and mouldering wood, within 

 Vvhich lay stretched the whitened skeleton of a man; a rough 

 deal cross was at his head, on which was an almost obliterated 

 inscription in Dutch, of which I could just decipher enough 

 to learn that I was looking on the remains of one Jacob 

 Moore, who had died in 1726, and who had, doubtless, been 

 one of the crew of some last century whaler, whose shipmates 

 had given him the only burial in their power, by leaving him 

 in his coffin on this inhospitable shore, where the ground is 

 so hardened with ice, that even in Summer it is impossible to 

 dig three inches into its frosty surface. Within the coffin and 

 peeping out between the whitened bones, grew this tiny 

 graceful flowering Saxifrage ! 



