6 
ackiiowledge my obligation to the Society for this valuable aid in iny work. I also 
ha ve to prof er my sincerest tbanks to Dr. A. Rendle, Keeper of the Herbarium of 
the British Museum of Natural History and to Mr. Ch. H. Wright, wlio was in 
charge of the Herbarium at the Royal Gardens at Kew during my stay there, for 
the permission of inspecting those important coliections and for the use of literature 
whereby my work was facihtated, as well as to several other gentlemen attached to 
those Institutions for the trouble they have kindly taken in assisting me. To Dr. 
B. Daydon Jackson I am highly obliged not only for the permission to inspect 
some arctic coliections in the possession of the Linnean Society but more still for 
the ready kindness with which he put at my disposal, on several occasions, bis com- 
prehensive knowledge of hterature and helped me to solve some puzzling questions. 
Finally I also have to thank Professor C. Lindman and Dr. H, Dahlstedt for the 
loan of arctic american specimeus from the Herbarium of the Museum of the Royal 
Academy of Sciences at Stockholm and my old friend Dr. C. H. Ostenfeld for 
assistance with the inspection of the arctic american coliections in the Museum of 
the Botanical Garden at Copenhagen. 
Indeed there are specimens from the Arctic American Archipelago also in many 
other coliections, and of course it would have been of considerable value to have 
bad the opportunity of inspecting also for instance the coliections of the Canadian 
Government Expeditions of låter years and those of the German Meteorological 
Station at Kingua, Cumberland Sound in 1882 — 83, but 1 feel qiiite justified 
in restricting my inspection to the specimens of the abovementioned herbaria, the 
more so as I think myself qualified through my previous work in arctic botany to 
criticize the identihcations even without seing the specimens. Besides the available 
specimens the plantlists given for different localities are utihzed for the special part 
of this paper, as well as all notes about the vegetation which I have found scattered 
in the reports and journals from the different expeditions. In the bibliography at 
the end are entered all such publications which I have found to bear more or less 
upon the botany of the region in question as well as the principal works treating 
its geographical and geological exploration. I have not, however, thought necessary 
to enumerate all the reports, expeditions of less importance and such as have not 
contributed to the botanical knowledge about the region being left out of considera- 
tion. As may be seen in the following, the degree of accuracy with which the 
different Islands of the Archipelago are knowu with regard t©^ their flora is verv 
variable, and only a few of them may be said to be comparatively well known. 
That the botanical exploration bas, notwithstanding the many expeditions, remained 
so incomplete, certainly is due to the fact that only a few points have been visited 
by trained botanists; most coliections are made by officers of the expeditions who 
did not possess sufficient knowledge of botany to make exhaustive coliections or 
notes about the region visited; especially the less showy plants such as grasses and 
other monocotyledons are often entirely wanting or at least certaiuly incompletely 
represented in the lists. VVe must, however, bear in mind the great difficulties 
