HOOKER ON ARCTIC PLANTS. 21 7 



in number of contained species. In many respects it is the most 

 remarkable of all the provinces, containing no peculiar species 

 whatever, scarcely any peculiarly American ones, and but a 

 scanty selection of European. 



A further peculiarity is that the floi-a of its Temperate regions 

 is extremely poor, and adds very few species to the whole flora, 

 and with few exceptions, only such as are Arctic in Europe also. 

 Being the only Arctic land that contracts to the southward, form- 

 ing a peninsula, which terminates in the ocean in a high northern 

 latitude, Greenland offers the key to the explanation of most of 

 the phenomena of Arctic vegetation ; and as I have already made 

 use of it for this purpose, I shall be more full in my description 

 of its flora than of any other. 



The east and west coasts of Greenland differ in many important 

 features ; the eastern is the largest in extent, the least indented 

 by deep bays, is perennially encumbered throughout its entire 

 length by ice-fields and icebergs, which are carried south by a 

 branch of the Arctic current that sets between Iceland and 

 Greenland, and is hence excessively cold, barren, and almost 

 inaccessible. The west coast again is generally more or less free 

 from pack-ice from Cape Farewell (lat. 60°) to north of Uper- 

 navik in lat. 73°. It is washed by a southerly current, which, 

 is said to carry drift timber from the Siberian rivers into its 

 fiords, and enjoys a far milder climate, and consequently has a 

 more luxuriant vegetation. 



A somewhat similar contrast is exhibited between West Green- 

 land and the opposite shores of Baffin's Bay and Davis' Strait, 

 because they may in some degree explain their differences of 

 vegetation. There is also another difference between the polar 

 islands and Greenland, inasmuch as the former are for the most 

 part low, without mountains or extensive glaciers ; while the 

 latter is exceedingly mountainous, with valleys along the shore 

 terminating in glacier-headed fiords, and the coast is bound by 

 glaciers of prodigious extent from MelviDe Bay to Smith's 

 Sound. 



The isothermal lines in Greenland all follow one course, from 

 S.W. to N.E., running more parallel to one another in this 

 meridian than in any other. The isotherm of 32° passes through 

 the southern extremity of the peninsula, and that of 5° through 

 its north extreme at Smith's Sound. The June isotherm of 41° 

 skirts its east coast, and that of 32° passes north of Disco. The 

 June temperature of Disco is hence as low as that of the north 

 of Spitzbergen, of middle Nova Zembla, and of the extreme 

 north of Asia; and yet Disco contains quadruple their number of 

 plants. The autumn cold is very great, the September isotherm, 

 of 32° crossing the Arctic Circle on the west coast ; and to this 

 scantiness of the flora may to some extent be attributed. r 



.. The Arctic Greenland flora contains 206 species according to 

 Luge's catalogue (in Rink's '* Gronland ") ; or 207, according 

 tip rny materials (Monocot. 67, Dicot. 140, = 1 : 2-1), the pro- 



