flora had increased considerably, thanks to the collections of the Vega Expedition, the brothers KRAUSE, G. M. DAWSON, J. M. MACOUN and F. FUNSTON, accounts of all of which were published. The interior is still but little known.
        The last years of the nineteenth century, when thousands and thousands again arrived at Dyea and Skagway and proceeded over the Chilkat Pass, the Chilkoot Pass and the White Pass into the upper Yukon basin in order to dig gold at Dawson and Klondike, were also characterized by great activity in the field of plant collecting. Prospectors who found no gold tried to cover the expenses of the trip, at least in part, by collecting plants for sale. Others were fascinated by the beautiful flora of this northern country and started plant collections. Geologists who now started to investigate and map every corner, however remote, of Alaska and Yukon, would often collect small but invaluable series of plants from their respective fields of work, and these series were usually published in their reports. A large scientific expedition, the HARRIMAN Expedition, organized by Mr. E. H. HARRIMAN, of New York City, obtained in 1899 the largest botanical collections ever made in Alaska. The expedition, which was originally planned as a pleasure trip, had 25 scientific members, and the material brought home, as far as vascular plants are concerned, chiefly collected by F. W. COVILLE and T. H. KEARNEY, now forms the nucleus of the Alaska collections in the National Herbarium at Washington.
        After the HARRIMAN expedition, which, however, only worked in Alaska during the period June 4-July 27, 1899, our knowledge of the coastal flora of Alaska may be said to have reached the stage at which only small additions could be made, with the exception of the flora of the Aleutian Islands. The vascular plants of the HARRIMAN Expedition were worked up partly by Dr. COVILLE but chiefly by Dr. P. C. STANDLEY, who also included in his work all the material that had previously been collected in Alaska and Yukon and preserved in Nat. Herb. Washington and several other herbaria. However, his work. which should long ago have given us a fairly good knowledge of the flora of this large area and formed the basis of further investigations, was never published. Since it was written many important additions to the flora have been made. and the taxonomic and phytogeographical sciences have undergone such changes that it cannot now be published.
        The fate that prevented STELLER from publishing his results and caused the loss of many an Alaskan collection during the course of the ardous