vi PREFACE 
would in all probability have remained unful- 
filled. 
Mr R. E. Holttum of St John’s College, who 
has recently been appointed Assistant Director of 
the Singapore Botanic Garden, accompanied me 
as Research Assistant and fully justified the high 
opinion I had previously formed of his keenness 
and ability as a botanist. I am grateful to him for 
many services in addition to those of a strictly 
scientific nature. To Mr Daugaard-Jensen, the 
Director for Greenland, and to many Danish 
officials resident in Greenland I am indebted for 
much willingly-rendered assistance. In a land 
where there are no hotels or guest-houses a foreign 
visitor is necessarily dependent on private hos- 
pitality, and this was generously extended to us. 
My indebtedness to Mr Morten Porsild, the 
Director of the Danish Arctic Station, cannot be 
adequately expressed. 
In the following pages, the publication of which 
I will not attempt to justify, my aim has been to 
avoid technical details as far as possible and to 
confine myself to a general, and necessarily very 
incomplete, treatment of the botany and geology of 
the country; but as the object of the journey was 
scientific preference is given to natural history 
subjects. I have not attempted to deal other than 
very superficially with the history of Greenland, 
with the present system of government, or with 
the life of the people. My own observations and 
impressions have been supplemented by facts ob- 
tained from some of the excellent contributions to 
