256 E. BROWK, FLORULA DISCOANA. 



XXXIV.— Flohula Discoana: Contributions to the 

 Phyto-Geography of Greenland, within tiie Parallels 

 of 68"" and 70^ North Latitude. By Dr. Robert 

 Brown, F.L.S., F.R.G.S., &c. 



[Reprinted, by Permission, from the "Transactions of the Botanical 

 Society of Edinburgh," vol. ix., part 2, 1868, pp. 430-465.] 

 Read July 9,1868. Slightly abridged ; and reyised by the 

 Author, March 1875.* 



I. Review of Greenland Botanical Literature. — The flora of 

 Greenland has been at various times partially examined by 

 different botanists. The early missionaries, Egede, Fabricius, 

 Saabye, and others, made collections of the plants of the districts 

 over which their ministerial functions extended, and some of these 

 are yet in the Herbarium at the Botanic Garden in Copenhagen. 

 In 1826 the Chevalier Charles Louis Giesecke (better known as 

 Sir Charles Giesecke), Professor of Mineralogy to the Royal 

 Dublin Society, who had passed several years in Greenland as a 

 mineral collector, published a list of the plants of that country.^ 

 His list comprehends a large number of species, but he is mani- 

 festly wrong in regard to many of them. Some, which may 

 possibly be members of the Greenland flora, have never been 

 found since his day. The various explorers in search of Franklin, 

 and the Surgeons of Whalers, have at diflerent times added to our 

 knowledge of the distribution of the plants, by collecting on 

 various portions of the coast.J But by far the most important 

 collections which ever came from Greenland were those of Yahl, 

 who botanised with the utmost assiduity over the whole extent of 

 Danish Greenland, and has published various papers on the plants. 

 The most valuable literary contribution, however, to the history 

 of the Greenland flora, is the list in the Appendix to Rink's 

 " Gronland geographisk og statistisk," by my friend Professor 



* Reprinted materially as in the original publication, without augmentation 

 from the later researches of Berggren, Th. Fries, and others, this paper will 

 serve as a specimen of a Botanist's summer-Avork in Greenland. 



f Article " Greenland," Brewster's Edinburgh Encj^clopadia. 



j Lyall's collections, by Hooker, in Journ. Linn, Soc. Bot. vol. i. pp. 114- 

 124 ; Notes on Arctic Plants, Dickie, Journ. Linn. Soc. Bot. vol. iii. 

 (1859) pp. 109-112 (plants collected by Clarke, Clark, Maitland, Philips, 

 Craig, and Sutherland) ; Dickie (Sutherland's Plants) in Appendix to Ingle- 

 field's " Summer Search for Sir John Franklin," (1853) ; Dickie on Philpott's 

 Plants from Lancaster Sound, Linn. Soc. Journ. Bot. vol. xi. p. 92 ; Sir W. J. 

 Hooker and Dickie in Appendix to Sutherland's Narrative of Penny's Ex- 

 pedition ; Account of the Botany of M'Clintock's Expedition (Walker's 

 Plants), Hooker and others, Journ. Linn. Soc. Bot. vol. v. p. 85 ; Taylor 

 on Davis' Strait Plants, Trans. Bot. Soc. vol. vii. p. 323, or Edin. Phil. Journ. 

 1862; Sadler's Notice of Cryptogamia collected by 11. Brown on islands of 

 Baffin's Bay, Ti'ans. Eot. Soc. vol. vii. p. 374 ; Sutherland on Cystopteris 

 alpina, Trans. Bot. Soc. vol. vii. p. 393 ; and generally Hooker, Linn. Soc. 

 Trans. 1861. 



