Introduction. 
Rou all the arctic lands, Greenland is by far the largest, 
extending from Cape Farewell, in lat. 59°46’, to Cape Morris Jesup, 
lat. 83° 39’, and Cape Bridgeman, in lat. 83°35’, and from Cape 
Alexander, in long. W. fr. Gr. 75° 30’, to the east coast of Shannon 
Island, in long. W. 17°30’. Its area may very roughly be reckoned 
as 600,000 square miles. From a botanical point of view, however, only 
a comparatively small part of its wide expanse is of any interest, the 
whole interior being covered up by the inland ice, the widest ice sheet 
of the Northern Hemisphere, which sends out numerous arms of different 
size to the coast, thus separating the habitable land into many parts, 
that may, however, be naturally grouped as follows: 
Danish West Greenland, from Cape Farewell up to the southern 
side of Melville Bay about lat. 74°. In the south, it is not sharply 
defined from the coastland of the east coast, but to the north it is 
separated from the land beyond Melville Bay by the many and mighty 
glaciers that, except for some coast mountains and nunataks, alone 
surround the interior of the bay, forming a very natural and well- 
defined demarcation-line between the southern and northern coast districts 
with their, in many respects, different floras and types of vegetation. 
North Western Greenland, beginning at the north side of Melville 
Bay in about lat. 76° and stretching up to the northernmost point, 
where it merges into the east coast, may be looked upon as being 
formed of two differents parts, the southern or Smith Sound region up 
to about lat. 79°, and the northern, from about 80° northwards. The 
boundary between them is formed by the enormous Humboldt Glacier, 
forming the coast-line for nearly one degree of latitude — a barrier 
which is not easily surmounted by any plant migration. 
Eastern Greenland is not so easily separated into natural divisions. 
A tolerably well defined line, however, may be drawn about lat. 73°30’, 
1 
