14 H. G. SIMMONS. [SEC. ARCT. EXP. FRAM 
Isle a very nearly representing the true flora. Now we find for Cape 
Vera 50 species, which to probably not a few might be added by a 
closer survey than that which I could make during my short visit. For 
Gull Cove the number is 34 and for Falcon Cliff 62, both perhaps some- 
what too small. From North Kent I have brought home 50 species of 
mosses. 
Now the question is to be approached: how have the plants of the 
two small islands reached thither over the open strait? It is especially 
to be noted that there are none of them that have fruits or seeds adapted 
for spreading by means of wind, if we except the grasses. Even Dryas 
integrifolia, which is so commonly distributed along both coasts of 
Jones Sound (also at Cape Vera) and which has so well-developed a 
flying apparatus, is absent from both islands. This does not speak in 
favour of attributing too great influence to the wind in transporting seeds. 
The grasses, indeed, especially Alopecurus alpinus, might have come 
over by aid of the wind, but they may also have used another mode 
of conveyance. Most of the plants have small, light seeds (Sawifraga 
oppositifolia and S. groenlandica, Papaver, the Drabae, Cochlearia, 
Cerastium) and may, perhaps, be transported by the wind, but for 
Saxifraga cernua this mode of conveyance becomes less acceptable, 
as generally it does not fruit but is vegetatively propagated. The 
bulbillae of this plant cannot be transported through the air. It appears 
at the first glance that the flowering plants of the islands are nearly 
all such as commonly grow around the gulls’ nests in the rookeries of 
the mainland. 
The spores of mosses are, of course, easily transported by wind 
over even far greater distances than those here in question, and thus 
we might easily find an explanation of the migration of those plants to 
the islands, if all mosses were commonly found in fruit in the adjacent 
lands. But now the case in fact is, that most mosses in arctic lands 
are always, or nearly always, found sterile. Bryn, Bryophyta, p. 1, 
also mentions that relatively few mosses fruit in Ellesmereland and 
elsewhere in our field, the acrocarpic musci foliosi principally; whereas 
capsules are found only exceptionally in the pleurocarpic species. Out 
of the 45 species found in one or both of the two islands, 23 are such 
as are specially mentioned by Brynn as found fruiting in my collec- 
tions from Ellesmereland or other adjacent regions, and concerning 4 
more, he-gives no special notice as to fruiting or sterile state, but as 
they belong to the acrocarpic species, in part to such as are generally 
found fruiting, we may perhaps reckon 27. Among those explicitly 
