218 FOREST LANDS OF NORTHERN RUSSIA. 
evidently contemporaneous, have furnished together sixty- 
five species, a considerable number, superior to that of the 
greater number of the European local floras of the same 
period. Nothing can be more curious to examine closely 
than this collection of forms then reassembled in the 
bosom of the same country in the neighbourhood of the 
Pole. 
‘Time has passed since the Jurassic ; and it has put its 
impress on this new flora, and has led to many changes 
from the anterior state of it; but as changes have an 
importance almost always proportional to the time passed, 
and as the interval which stretches from the Bathonian, 
probably the level of Cape Bohemaan, is infinitely less than 
that which separates the plants of this last from those of 
the lower carboniferous strata, it is quite a simple matter 
to establish the less profound modifications in the nature 
at least of the constituent elements of the Arctic vegeta- 
tion in looking at it towards the commencement of the 
chalk period. Ferns, cycads, and conifers, compose always 
the principal groups; the ferns dominate in their entirety, 
the conifers come next. The cycads hold only the third 
rank in number, as well as in frequency of occurrence. 
‘But we have established in this respect very sensible 
local differences: the cycads scarcely show themselves, 
excepting at Kome and Ekkorfat, and always associated 
with ferns and with conifers ; whilst at Pattorfik there are 
only ferns and conifers, and at Avkrusak these two groups 
have only by the side of them some remains of cycads; 
the moxocotyledons do not show themselves but in a 
restricted number, and they have nothing conclusive about 
them; there were no palms as yet, as there. were in 
Europe at the same age, but probably screw-pines rather 
ill-defined as yet—in fine, with scarcely a single excep- 
tion, no dicotyledons ; and that exception was special to 
Pattorfik, where the beds with vegetable imprints occupied 
the extreme base of the formation, which is all the more 
curious. It constitutes of itself an occurrence of which I 
shall, in a little, enquire into the exact significance.’ 
