Botany of the Canadian Eastern Arctic

Abstract

WORK on the flora of the Canadian Eastern Arctic has been dogged by misfortune. James M. Macoun, chief botanist of what is now the National Herbarium of Canada, made several expeditions into the western part of the area, collecting a wealth of material, but died before his father in 1910. His prospective collaborator, Theo. Holm, had in 1902 promised at an early date a work on the Hudson Bay flora, but died before he completed it. Thorild Wolff died in 1917 crossing the extreme north of Greenland before he reached the area he chiefly set out to explore. M. O. Malte, successor to Macoun as chief botanist at the National Museum, in 1927 began work in earnest in collaboration with C. H. Ostenfeld, director of the Botanical Garden, Copenhagen, a well-known specialist in the Arctic flora. Ostenfeld died in 1931 and Malte in 1933, but during these few years Malte made three voyages in the Canadian Eastern Arctic, collecting more than ten thousand sheets of specimens.

Botany of the Canadian Eastern Arctic

Part I: Pteridophyta and Spermatophyta. By Nicholas Polunin. (National Museum of Canada, Bulletin No. 92.) Pp. vi + 408. (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1940.) 1 dollar.