APPENDIX NO. XVIII. 
443 
friend, Professor Asa Gray; but, owing to the pressure of his occupations, 
I have not been able to secure bis valuable services to the extent of 
my anticipations. I am, however, greatly indebted to him for hints 
and remarks that have been very useful to me. I am under peculiar 
obligations to Professor Torrey for the determination of the Graminece 
and his assistance in some of the most perplexing genera; and also 
to my friend Thomas P. James, Esq., for the entire enumeration of 
mosses, Hepatic# and Lichens. I am most happy to take this oppor¬ 
tunity to render to these three gentlemen my sincere acknowledgments 
for their great kindness. 
Laying aside the consideration of the lost packages, Dr. Kane’s col¬ 
lections arc yet among the richest and most interesting ever brought 
by Arctic and Polar explorers. They not only afford a considerable 
accession to our previous knowledge of the vegetation of Northern 
Greenland, but they develop facts of some importance in a physico- 
geographieal point of view:— 
First.—By exhibiting, throughout the range of coasts between the 
Arctic and Polar circles, no perceptible change in the number and 
identity of the species therein collected; thus establishing, as far at 
least as Greenland is concerned, that the third or Polar zone of Sir 
John Kichardson* might as well begin at the 67th as at the 73d N. 
latitude. 
Secondly.—By the reappearance, beyond the limits of Smith’s Sound 
of Hesperis Pallasii and Vesicaria, arctlea, in a perfect fruiting state;— 
Two plants belonging rather to the milder regions of the Arctic zone, 
and which have never been found yet, I believe, in the higher inter¬ 
vening points. Both these plants belonged to a scanty collection of 
eight or ten specimens, made late in the season, on the newly-discovered 
lands of Washington and Humboldt, on the very verge of that myste¬ 
rious Polar sea which Dr. Kane’s expedition had the good fortune to 
espy and sec free of ice as far as the eye could reach. Such a fact, 
indeed, although limited to two species, seems to indicate peculiar iso¬ 
thermal influences, depending either on warm currents, greater depth 
of water, or actual depression of our globe at its poles. 
Another remarkable feature of Dr. Kano’s collection is, that, divid¬ 
ing into two equal parts the whole extent of coasts visited by him, and 
each section presenting about the same number of stations at which 
herborizations were made, the northern section, from Upcrnavik to 
Washington Land, has yielded more dicotyledonous plants than the 
* See Appendix to Searching Expedition, London, 1551, p. 319 and following. 
