ARCTIC REGIONS 71 
interesting fact that annuals are very rare; only four 
or five flowering plants complete their life-cycle in 
one season, Inthe Swiss Alps the percentage of 
annuals falls as higher altitudes are reached. 
While it is true that many of the Greenland 
plants exhibit a characteristic and peculiar habit 
of growth as well as certain external characters and 
structural features in their foliage and stems that 
are usually considered to be adaptations to rigorous 
climatic conditions, others are in no visible respect 
different from plants that flourish in a warmer and 
much more favourable environment. The power 
to endure hardship probably resides ia some 
quality of constitution, something that is funda- 
mental in the composition of their ‘physical basis 
of life,’ the living protoplasm. 
The high northern distribution and the abund- 
ance of flowering plants in Arctic regions afford a 
striking contrast to the conditions in correspond- 
ing latitudes in the southern hemisphere. The 
North Pole is surrounded by the Polar Sea bounded 
by a ring of circumpolar lands; the South Pole is 
situated on a vast continent separated from the 
nearest land masses by the turbulent southern 
ocean with scattered archipelagoes and solitary 
islands, some of which are of comparatively recent 
origin while others may be vestiges of submerged 
connecting bridges. Not a single flowering plant 
has been discovered within the Antarctic Circle. 
The most southerly representative of the flowering 
plants, over four hundred of which occur in Green- 
land, is a grass (Deschampia antarctica) which was 
