13G 
l’KKSIDENT S ADDRESS. 
and to read “ The Skandinavian Flora is decidedly Arctic ” ? May 
not the facts be something like these 1 Before the Glacial Epoch 
a flora having its origin in Polar regions, which then presented 
a more extensive land surface and enjoyed a milder climate than 
they do now, had, radiating from the pole as centre, established 
itself very widely over the earth. As the cold and hardship 
increased, many species in high latitudes perished under them ; but 
others, possessing greater powers of resistance, such as we find 
growing now to the north of the Arctic circle, and in the 
mountains of Continental Europe, and of our own islands, held 
on just about where they were and never “migrated” at all. 
Some of them, such as the Willows alluded to by Nathorst, 
increased vastly, and then died away as the cold diminished again, 
leaving their semi-fossilised remains behind them. 
There are many anomalies — such, for instance, as the absence 
of Caltha and almost entire absence of Leguminoste as an order 
from Greenland to which Sir J. D. Hooker alludes, or that of 
Salix polariti, once so widely distributed, from Greenland and 
Iceland— -which seem inexplicable; but do we know enough of the 
life-histories, or of the necessary life-conditions of these, or indeed 
of any of our present Arctic plants, to form even a doubtful 
“ hypothesis ” on any such subject 1 
This theory of plants holding their own in their old localities, 
in spite of ice and cold, may appear dull and stupid beside the 
attractive and showy hypothesis of migration to and fro from 
north to south and back again, but is it not more consistent 
with the facts which we know now exist l Remember, it was the 
slow but steady tortoise that won the race at last, and not the 
brilliant but eccentric Hare, and that, in this race, the goal at 
which we want to arrive is fact and not hypothesis. 
