16 H. G. SIMMONS. [SEC. ARCT. EXP. FRAM 
if doubts are not to arise in the mind of one who has had opportunities 
of forming a tolerably well-based opinion about the flora of those regions. 
The first list of the plants collected during the expedition, is given in 
Nares, Narrative, where Oxrver has enumerated the flowering plants 
from Ellesmereland, and J. D. Hooker has given some notes about the 
relations and peculiarities of the flora, to which I shall have to come 
back later on. Afterwards Hart himself gave a detailed record of the 
flora, with accounts about the distribution of each separate species 
(Bot. Br. Pol. Exp.). He also gives some notes about the vegetation of 
the places visited, beginning with some Danish Greenland ports and 
further on Cape York and Foulke Fjord which latter is represented as 
“this most interesting of all our havens”. I can fully agree with him 
in this view, as also in his conjecture that more remains to be found 
there, notwithstanding the Foulke Fjord list has now, after my two short 
excursions at the place, become by far the largest of any N. W. Green- 
land district of the same extent. 
Further to the north Hart visited Hannah Island and Bessels Bay. 
Among the plants from the latter locality he especially mentions Poa 
alpina, whichis, however, doubtless due to a wrong identification of a form of 
P. cenisia, as no specimen of the former exists in the London collec- 
tions. Polaris Bay was visited by Hart in May, when only few plants 
were discernible, and by Coppinger in July and August. This station 
is said to be rather poor in plant-life (for instance only two Sasxifragae 
and no Cyperaceae), and Harr is inclined to attribute this to the cir- 
cumstance that the climate is severer there than on the west side of the 
Channel. That may be so, but 1 am more inclined to think that it is 
caused by the geological nature ‘of the soil, the hard limestone forming 
a very poor ground. The entire list of Polaris Bay contains only 
twenty-two species, or in fact only nineteen. when those are exluded 
which are either wrongly determined, or cannot be upheld as separate 
(Papaver alpinum, Draba rupestris, Dryas octopetala). I am hardly 
inclined to think that this list is complete if it is to hold good for a 
wider range; but I have indeed seen small districts much further south 
in the limestone region of Ellesmereland having an equally poor vege- 
tation. 
The GreeLy expedilion did not contribute much to our knowledge of 
the Greenland flora, as its principal field of work fell to the west; still 
we are indebted to Lockwoop and Brarnarp for some plants from the 
northern-most points in the world where collections have been made 
(what the collections from the latest Danish East Greenland expedition 
