Preface. 



In the present publication, vol. Ill of the series Contribiitiones Ad Floram Asiae 

 Interioris Perlinentes, is given an account of the vascular plants I collected and observed 

 on my journey in the summer of 1914 in southern Siberia and north-western Mongolia, 

 in the so-called Urjankai country, a tract of land about the sources of the Yenisei, as 

 yet almost entirely unknown. 



As to the travelling route of the expedition, the nature of the field of operations and 

 our journey on the whole, 0rjan Olsen has given a detailed account in his book. 

 Til Jeniseis Kilder, Den norske Sibirie-ekspedidons Reise Wli (Christiania 

 1915). I have, moreover, in a previous work, Die Chlorophyceen des Siidlichen 

 Sibiriens and des Urfankailandes, the first publication of the botanical results of the 

 expedition, also given a brief summary of our journey. 



The original plan of the expedition of exploring only in southern Siberia, was some- 

 what altered, owing to a work published some months before our departure by Douglas 

 Carruthers, the English geographer. In this work, which was entitled Unknown 

 Mongolia (London 1914), the author, without entering into further details, relates of a 

 strange tribe of Soyote reindeer-nomads he had met with in the isolated wooded regions 

 near the sources of the Yenisei, being till then practically quite unknown. On account 

 of this sensational information, it was agreed, at the last moment, that the expedition 

 should also try to penetrate, if possible, to this interesting race for the purpose of 

 procuring further particulars. 



Consequently, the expedition came to traverse one of the regions in every respect 

 least known in the interior of Asia, an out-of-the-way, isolated country, quite hidden 

 by the impassable, wild Sayansk mountains and the waste mountain steppes of Mongolia, 

 where the natives of the country have been able to preserve their original stamp, leading 

 this very day a primitive hfe, altogether uninfluenced by any foreign culture. Carruthers 

 expresses himself in the following way about this country: «This birthplace of one of 

 Asia's greatest rivers, the region of the sources of the Yenisei, has hitherto escaped the 

 discerning eye and eager foot of the traveller. The existing maps of this country are 

 much at fault, certain have never even been mapped, and no attempt has been made to 

 describe the wild stretches of dense forest and rugged ranges on the Siberian-Mongol 

 frontier, or the strange tribes of shy, forest-dweUing Urjankhai inhabiting them.» 



