130 
president’s address. 
receded.” This opens quite a new field for inquiry as to the 
distribution of plants in a severely glaciated country, and deserves 
much further investigation. If perennial woody plants can remain 
dormant for an indefinite time while covered by ice, that portion 
of the flora stands in little risk of “destruction” during a glacial 
period, and this may throw some light on the conclusions arrived 
at in a paper by Dr. Nathorst, to be alluded to presently. 
Third — Extreme cold in a comparatively bare country with but 
little snow. This at first sight appears likely to be the most fatal 
form of cold and hardship to flowering plants. What are the facts 1 
In Grinnell Land, Lat. 82° N., General Greely found large tracts of a 
comparatively bare country.* In Discovery Bay, “ten Musk Oxen 
were feeding, the adjacent brook slopes and margins were clothed 
with vegetation, thick beds of Dryas, clusters of Saxifrages, varied 
with Sedges, Grasses, or Buttercups. Higher up, countless Arctic 
Poppies of luxuriant growth dotted the landscape.” In September, 
t Greely watches two Musk Oxen feeding, their food was almost 
entirely Dryas and Saxifraga, the Grasses and Lichens were almost 
entirely lacking, and in no case did he note the Musk Ox “feeding 
on the latter vegetation, although in many places the ground was 
covered with scanty minute Lichens for acres in extent.” This matter 
of the Musk Ox food is important to our subject, for it marks the 
fact that herbage must be plentiful, for Greely’s party saw between 
200 and 300 Musk Oxen, and actually killed 80 of them in one 
year. Again he writes “To right and left on the southern shore 
of Lake Hazen, low rounded hills, bare, as a rule, of snow, extended 
far to east and west. Numerous tracks of Hare and Ptarmigan were 
seen in the vicinity of our camp.” Greely found no less than 
sixty-nine species of flowering plants in Grinnell Land, and he 
records the very curious fact that, in that country, “elevation above 
the sea makes little or no difference to the plants.” § 
* Greely, ‘Three Years’ Arctic Service,’ vol. i. p. 81. 
f Lor. cit. p. 104. 
J Loc. cit. p. 27G. 
§ For additional particulars of part of Grinnell Land see “ Botany of the 
British Polar Expedition of 1875 — 6, by H. C. Hart, Naturalist to II.M.S. 
‘ Discovery,’” ‘Journal of Botany,’ 1880. 
