1886.] ON VARIATIONS OF CLIMATE IN THE COURSE OF TIME. 5 



111 the lower districts, sheltered from the open sea. we lind 

 in favourable spots another group of plants, which also shiin the 

 coast, and which thrive on loose slates and wann liraestone cliffs 

 or in screes of different kinds of rock, under precipitous moun- 

 tains, facing the south. These screes are generally full of bare 

 boulders at the bottom; but in the finer debris higher up grows 

 a wreath of green underwood, formed of tender deciduous trees 

 and shrubs, hazel, eim, lime, maple, wild apple, dogroses, Sorbus 

 Aria, Primus avium &c., as well as a number of highly scented 

 Labiatæ, several Papilionaceæ, grasses and a great number of 

 other plants, together forming that part of the Norwegian low- 

 land flora, which shuns the open sea coast and prefers the fjords 

 and the sunny valleys. But even this flora has a scattered 

 extension. It is richest in the tracts around Christiania, and 

 becomes poorer westwards along the coast, disappearing almost 

 entirely on the coast of the province of Bergen, but at the bot- 

 tom of the Sogne- and Hardanger- and along the Throndhjems- 

 fjord we find the same flora, and that in spite of these parts 

 being entirely separated from the eastern parts by enoi'mous 

 raountains. 



Near the open sea the flora becomes poorer in species, most 

 of those characteristic of the interior disappearing, whilst their 

 number is not by far made up by those belonging to the coast. 

 Here we shale only name a few of the coast plants, such as the 

 holly, the ivy, the foxglove, whilst in place of the Primula veris 

 of East of Norway, we have the P. acaulis of the West-coast. In 

 the woodless tracts of the coast the heather predominates, and 

 besides the ordinary common one we flnd two other species. This 

 group of plants belong exclusively to the south and west coast 

 and is hardly found north of the Throndhjemsfjord. Most of 

 its species are not found near Christiania, but they reappear in the 

 South of Sweden. Some, however, are in Scandinavia only found 

 on the west coast of Norway, and we must travel to the Faroe 

 Islands, Scotland, England, and Belgium to re-encounter them. 



We have thus seen that the Norwegian flora cousists of 

 groups of species, which make different demands as to climate. 



