A survey of the Phytogeography of the Arctic American Archipelago 169 
vegetation during the iceage, as I have tried to show that they could not have, we 
must assume their whole flora to have immigrated from the Continent, and then it 
becomes most natural to look upon all species common to the Archipelago and 
Greenland as american. But that would give us more than 50 pct. of american 
species in the flora of East Greenland. 
It would have been very useful to have similar tables over the distribution of 
the separate species in Greenland, as I have previously given for the Achipelago, 
and actually I have had to make them out, but they are too voluminous to inserl 
here, and therefore the table VII must serve, where I have only put in the figures 
for the groups into which the flora of the two areas in question can naturally be 
divided. The pct. columns here give figures for the Joint flora of the Arctic Archi- 
pelago and Greenland, amounting to 371 species, a number reached by excluding 
the plants peculiar to the birch region, while three species, Saxifraga hteraciifolia, 
Polemonium horeale, and Matricaria inodora, are counted twice, because their range 
in East Greenland has no connection with that in America. 
For West Greenland the table shows the predominance of the american species 
still more clearly than for the east coast. Now I have, indeed, reckoned as american 
all species recorded for America, and perhaps some readers may object to using 
the name in so wide a sense, but I think it quite right to assume as immigrants 
from the west all plants more or less commonly distributed in America. That 
such species have actually used the shorter way from the American Continent to 
the Arctic Islands and to Greenland and not the longer from Europé, I am inclined 
to take for granted. The conformity in the Greenland distribution between the american 
species in a narrower sense — those with an eastern hmit in Greenland — and 
that of most circumpolar plants in that country, in my opinion does not admit 
any other explanation, but even if we go so far as to look upon all species common 
to America and northern Europé as quite useless for the solving of the question 
of the provenience of the Greenland flora and leave them out of consideration, we 
shall still in western Greenland get a percentage of 11.5 american species to 4.0 
european, and in eastern Greenland both amount to 7 pct.; but this is mostly diie 
to the curious immigration of eastern types on the northeastern coast. 
How these eastern species have reached the northeastern coast of Greenland, 
is one of the difficult questions in the history of the Greenland flora, another refers 
to the eastern species of the western coast, and another again to those of the birch 
region, left out in the above figures. I shall not try to solve these problems, only 
I will point out that the assumption of a more or less continuous land- connection from 
Europé, existing at a time when the european icesheets had begun to retreat east- 
ward. would considerably simphfy them But even in assuming a late glacial or 
• Of course I cannot here enter upon a recapitulation of the whole array of facts, speaking 
Scotland over the Fseroes and Iceland to Greenland, or on the contest about it which I have 
myself some years ago taken part 'in, but I may refer to a rather inteiesting paper of Stejneger, 
»The Origin of the so-called Atlantic animals and plants of Western Norway» wliere most of the 
literatnre concerning former postglacial ways of migration in northern Europé is discussed, even 
if not all facts are taken into consideration there. 
