150 
The numerons arctic seabirds certainly are of rather little importance in this 
respect, even if such as often visit lakes and pools inland, for iustance eider ducks, 
longtailed ducks, species of Leatris, as well as the different species of Tringa and 
other wading birds, may occasionally carry seeds with them. Epizoical transport 
may perhaps also be of some importance for the rarely fruiting waterplants such 
as Cardawine pratensis and Ranunculus hyperhoreus. 
The herbivorous inamtnals of the Archipelago, the inuskox, the reindeer the 
hare, and the lemming, certainly are of small importance for the dissemination of 
plants. Seeds of herbs or small shrubs eaten by them doubtless will be entirely 
digested, so as to exclude endozoical dispersion through them, but the two first- 
mentioned may so.netimes serve for an epizoical one, as they are in the habit of 
wandering about rather niuch and are not afraid of crossing the ice even of the 
broader straits. The lemming in nestbuilding and collecting of food may perhaps 
sometimes offect a synzoical spreading also, but I do not believe any of them to 
have contributed to the general distribution, ouly perhaps occasionally to the local 
dispersion. 
The carnivorous animals must also be mentioned, even if they cannot have 
contributed much to the distribution of plants. The wolf, the arctic fox, the 
wolverine, and the ermine, as well as the snowy owl and the gyrfalcou, to which 
the räven may be added, can hardly effect a sowing out of plants in any other 
way than by killing herbivorous birds or mammals and thus stopping the digestion 
of seeds or even bulbillae which these may have lately devoured and still keep in 
an unimpaired state in their crop or stomach. The icebear, however, is so far an 
herbivorous animal as he will in times of want resort to vegetable food, that is 
certamly but imperfectly digested, and he is, moreover, said to be rather fond of 
berries. With bis habit of roaming far about and being able to cover considerable 
distances in a short time. he certainly may sometimes carry seeds to a distance 
and effect a colonisation. The appearance of Ruhus Chammmorus on King William 
Land may perhaps be due to the bear, but another factor may also be thought of 
which I shall come to immediately. That too much stress is not to be laid upon 
the import of plants with fleshy fruits by means of animals may, however, be 
concluded from the fact of a comparatively large number of such species, five at 
least, reachi,ig the shore of the Polar Sea, but not even the nearest islands. 
In almost every part of the world man is to be reckoned as one of the most 
important factors for the stocking of the flora with new species, but in the Arctic 
Archipelago the anthropochorous element, if it exists at all, certainly is very insigni- 
ficant. In present time only the southernmost islands are inhabited, viz., Baffin 
Land, where settlements are rather equally dislributed from Lancaster Sound along 
the eastem coast to Hudson Strait, Victoria Land, where the southern coast alone 
seems to be inhabited, and King William Land which is, as it seems, rather often 
deserted m winter. Fonnerly, however, the Eskimos have lived all over the Archi- 
pelago up to the northern part of Ellesmereland, and traces of them are found in 
