Arctic Scandinavia or Lapland, according to Sir Joseph Hooker, contains three-fourths of the entire number of species of plants known from the whole circumpolar area. His view, that the Greenland flora is almost exclusively Lapponian,--having only an extremely slight admixture of American or Asiatic types,--again points to a former more intimate connection between North America and Arctic Europe, and indeed he remarks (p. 252), "It is inconceivable to me that so many Scandinavian plants should, under existing conditions of sea, land, and temperature, have not only found their way to Greenland by migration across the Atlantic, but should have stopped short on its western coast and not crossed to America." Hooker's view, that the Scandinavian flora is of great antiquity, that, at the advent of the Glacial period, it was everywhere driven southwards, and that during the succeeding warm epoch the surviving species returned north, has been adopted by the great majority of naturalists. The natural corollary of this theory is that there must have been, between the beginning of the Glacial period and the present time, either two independent land-connections between the Polar Regions and Northern Europe at different epochs to enable animals and plants to travel southwards and once more to regain their former northern home, or, that during the whole of the Glacial period the Polar Regions were uninterruptedly connected with Northern Europe, until the fauna and flora had once more reached their northern goal, after the Polar lands had been desolated by the supposed rigours of that period.