Inland Area at Bernard Harbour 43 ¢ 
as the summer progresses, the plants grow quickly and during the height of 
the summer exhibit their blue, red, yellow, or white cymes and stars to the 
delight of numberless insects and children of mankind. Gentle summer breezes 
imbibe the lovely odour of these many flowers and carry it down to lower 
levels, where it mingles with the evaporation from ponds and swamps and is felt 
even on the sea.? 
Inland Area 
A kind of transition zone between the coastal tundra and the bedrock 
table-land inland is formed by more or less extensive stony or clayey gravel 
plains with swampy depressions, lakes and ponds, which intervene between the 
ridges of sand, gravel, and boulders, stretching from the hinterland to the coast. 
Taken as a whole, these plains are exceedingly barren of vegetation, having 
only scattered plants of grasses, Silene acaulis, Draba, Saxifraga oppositifolia, 
Dryas, Potentilla, and a few others. Alsine verna var. rubella is perhaps the 
most typical plant for these gravel plains. The swampy depressions, however, 
have usually a rich vegetation of Carex, Eriophorum, etc. The only other 
vegetation to speak of is found on top of certain hummocks which melt free 
of snow early in the summer and are the favourite camping places for the 
Eskimos when travelling inland. These plains often stretch far inland over 
areas where no outcrops of bedrock occur, but are not very markedly set off from 
the adjoining ridges. 
Certain plants, viz.: Salix pulchra, Betula glandulosa, Cardamine digitata, 
Rhododendron lapponicum, Cassiope tetragona, Vaccinium uliginosum forma 
microphylla, Pedicularis arctica, and one or two others may be said to be typical 
for the dry tundra swamps or slopes inland and do not occur right at the coast 
in the vicinity of Bernard harbour, according to my observations. (Plate 
VIII, fig. 2) In the case of Salix and Betula the reason apparently is the 
greater amount of protection from the wind given them inland; and this is also 
shown by their luxuriant growth in the shelter of large boulders or in depres- 
sions, small gullies, etc., where others plants also reach an unusual development. 
While the gravel ridges right at the coast are very barren except on the 
south sides and in particularly protected pockets, their vegetation a few miles 
inland is far better, both on the tops and slopes. Particularly where many 
boulders are scattered the vegetation is rich, and in the depressions mosses, 
Cassiope, Vaccinium, etc., are common. Different lichens and grasses, Silene, 
Draba corymbosa, Saxifraga oppositifolia, S. tricuspidata, Dryas, Potentilla‘ 
Pedicularis lanata, are by far the most predominant plants on the ridges; it is 
only in particularly favourable places that other plants, such as Carex and Chrys- 
anthemum integrifolium, are conspicuous. During all my stay at Bernard har- 
bour I was unable to find any plants which might be considered typical to the 
tops of the hills or gravel ridges and which were not also found on the surround- 
ing lower ground in places where the soil was similar. The character of the 
2 Men who are familiar with Arctic conditions have criticized many of the accompanying photographs of Arctic plant 
assemblages as giving an exaggerated idea of the size of most of the plants. In order to make the species of low or 
dwarfed ground vegetation identifiable in a picture it has been necessary to bring the camera very near to the object, 
losing depth ot background, and giving no just standard of comparison. For photographic purposes, thrifty, well- 
developed specimens have usually been chosen, showing the grouping of locally associated species, so that such pictures 
are typical of the possibilities of particular plants growing in favourable situations, rather than of their depauperate or 
even average aspects under other conditions. Some of the less hardy species, moreover, are local in their Arctic distri- 
bution, and are not found except in an abnormally sheltered habitat. - 
The author’s report on ‘Insect Life on the Western Arctic Coast of America, Part K of Volume III, Report of the 
Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18,” is in a measure complementary to the present botanical paper. The insect life of 
the Arctic, as elsewhere, is to a larg> extent dependent upoa the plint life, and the twenty photographic reproductions 
accompanying the paper on insect life are in some ways b2tter adapted than the illustrations of the present paper to 
giving a fairly complete bird's-eye view of the averag2 vegetation in each of the different types of country visited by the 
expedition.—Ed. 
