The Flora of Spitzbergen consists of about ninety-three species of flowering or phenogamous plants, which generally grow in isolated tufts or patches; but the mosses which carpet the moist lowlands, and the still more hardy lichens, which invest the rocks with their thin crusts or scurfs as far as the last limits of vegetation, are much more numerous. Some of the plants of Spitzbergen are also found on the Alps beyond the snow-line, at elevations of from 9000 to 10,000 feet above the level of the sea. According to Mr. Martins, nothing can give a better idea of Spitzbergen than the vast circus of _névé_, in the centre of which rises the triangular rock known to the visitors of Chamonny as the Jardin or the Courtil. Let the tourist, placed on this spot at a time when the sun rises but little above the horizon, or better still, when wreaths of mist hang over the neighboring mountains, fancy the sea bathing the foot of the amphitheatre of which he occupies the centre, and he has a complete Spitzbergen prospect before him. Supposing him to be a botanist, the sight of the _Ranunculus glacialis_, _Cerastium alpinum_, _Arenaria biflora_, and _Erigeron uniflorus_ will still further increase the illusion. The only esculent plant of Spitzbergen is the _Cochlearia fenestrata_, which here loses its acrid principles, and can be eaten as a salad. The grasses which Keilhau found growing near some Russian huts in Stans Foreland are during the summer a precious resource for the reindeer, which, though extremely shy, make their appearance from time to time in every part of the land from the Seven Islands to South Cape, and are more abundant than could have been expected. The Polar bears are probably their only native enemies on these islands, and their fleetness furnishes them with ample means of escape from a pursuer so clumsy on land. Lord Mulgrave’s crew killed fifty deer on Vogelsang, a noted hunting-place, and on Sir Edward Parry’s polar expedition about seventy deer were shot in Treurenberg Bay by inexperienced deer-stalkers, and without the aid of dogs. During the winter these large herbivora live on the Icelandic moss which they scent under the snow, but it may well be asked where they find shelter in a naked wilderness without a single tree. In May and June they are so thin as scarcely to be eatable, but in July they begin to get fat, and then their flesh would everywhere be reckoned a delicacy. Besides the reindeer, the only land-quadrupeds of Spitzbergen are the Polar bear, the Arctic fox, and a small field-mouse, which in summer has a mottled, and in winter a white fur.