COL. PEILDEN AND MR. GELDART ON SPITSBERGEN PLANTS. 
Salix polaris, Wahl. ? Advent Bay and Dane’s Island. 
„ reticulata, Linn. „ 
Luzula hyperborea, E. Br. „ 
Eriophorum capitatum, Host. „ 
Alopecurus alpinus. Sm. ,, 
IilEROCHLOE ALPINA, Lilin. ,, 
(POA. ) 
Lycopodium Selago, Linn. ,, 
There are, in addition to the above, about five or six Drabce 
which I have failed to get named, and one or two plants not 
identified ; in all, a total of over forty species, or nearly a third 
of the species of flowering plants known to he found in Spitsbergen. 
Most of these species are of very extensive distribution throughout 
the Arctic regions; hut there is one notable exception in Potentilla 
pulchella, which (I quote from ‘Warming’s Tables,’ 1887) occurs 
nowhere else in the Eastern Hemisphere. Saxifraga hieracifolia 
and S. Hirculus are also of curious distribution, both being absent 
from Greenland, excepting the north-east coast, from N. lat. 70° 
to 76°. The strange little Saxifraga flagellar is is confined to 
extreme Arctic regions, and does not reappear in either Great 
Britain or on the European Alps, as do most of its genus. 
Satisfactory as this collection is, considering the very few hours 
Colonel Feilden was able to devote to it, it is not sufficient to 
illustrate either the origin or the general distribution of the flora 
of Spitsbergen. The very commonly accepted theory that the 
whole of the Phanerogamic Flora of the Arctic regions was driven 
southwards by the ice during the Glacial Period, and returned 
afterwards, when the ice had retreated, by means of “ bridges ” 
since submerged (in the case of Spitsbergen, between that archipelago 
and Novaya Zemlia), may, in the light of recent observation, require 
reconsideration. The views of geologists respecting the extent of 
the ice-sheet which is supposed to have covered the North of 
Europe seem to have become modified of late, and some of the 
results which have been attributed to the action of the ice-sheet 
are now referred to that of water-borne ice. The travels of 
Lieut. Peary show that, even in very high latitudes, flowering 
plants hold their own on every little refuge or vantage ground, 
such as rocks protruding through the ice (Nunatak) as well as on 
