PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
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richly adorned and enlivened by beautiful flowers, lines and flashes 
of bright green appear on the lower slopes, and a fainter green tinge 
may be noticed on the subordinate summits at a height of 2000 or 
3000 feet. The lower are made mostly by Alder bushes, and the 
topmost by a lavish profusion of flowering plants, Cassiope, 
Yaccinium, Pyrola, Erigeron, Gentiana, Campanula, Anemone, 
Larkspur, and Columbine, with a few grasses and ferns. 
Clearly the most acute glaciation by glacier action in this 
Northern Hemisphere does not “destroy” the flora. 
In connexion with these Alaskan glaciers there is a curious effect 
of glaciation on vegetation lately observed in that country which 
must not be overlooked. In 1883, Professor Thomas Meehan, 
while examining the glaciers in South-east Alaska, found reason for 
believing that plants do not merely advance in the wake of retreating 
glaciers, or push into growth from material brought down in their 
advance, but that when caught under the mass of flowing ice would 
remain for an indefinite period retaining vitality, and push again 
into growth when the ice retreated, lie was led to this conclusion 
by finding no annual plants among those collected in the immediate 
wake of retreating glaciers, while the actual number of species of 
perennials would be as great as if much time had been given for a 
floral advance, .... these and some other facts led to the 
hypothesis that the plants were not migratory, but had held their 
position through the whole icy period. In 1892, William E. Meehan 
(son of the above) was acting as botanist to the expedition sent to 
the relief of Lieutenant Peary in West Greenland. He also paid 
great attention to this question of suspended vitality of plants under 
ice, and claims to have strengthened his father’s observations. 
As Co Salix arefira, ho writes in a paper read at Philadelphia: 
“ In Inglefield Bay, there were found large old plants within twenty 
feet of a receding glacier, and in a spot which had certainly been 
covered by ice less than two years before. There were no lateral or 
medial moraines to bring the plants, and all the facts on the spot 
led to the conclusion that the Willows had been buried when the 
glacier flowed over the spot, and had been dormant until the ice 
* “Contributions to the Flora of Greenland,” William E. Meehan, Proc. 
Acad. Nat. Sciences, Philadelphia, April, 1893, p. 205. 
