The Botany of Iceland - 01.12.1949, Page 7

PREFACE
A s a member of the Czechoslovak Expedition of Natural Science to
xVlceland in the years 1936 and 1937, I had the opportunity to
study the Vegetation and the Flora of Reykjanes Peninsula, SW Ice-
land. My work in the field lasted for about five months; I have visited
most of the valleys and hills of this vast territory. The extensiveness
of the work has of course its drawbacks — I was not able to collect
sufficient material of the Genera Taraxacum and Hieracium.
During my work in the field I received much valuable information
from my friend, Dr. Mirko Kuthan, volcanologist, who made the
geological survey of the Reykjanes Peninsula. Most excursions in this
difficult terrain were made together with him, and during long spells
of rainy and foggy weather we discussed in our tent most of the
problems of geography and geology of Iceland and especially of our
working area.
To my Danish friend, Mag. Johs. Gröntved, I am indebted
for much information and for botanical literature about Iceland.
I am grateful to my many Icelandic friends for their outstanding
hospitality and valuable and friendly help during my travels in the
coastal region of the Peninsula.
During the years I have spent in Iceland I have come to love its
rough and apparently inhospitable nature, its keen and warm-hearted
people, and I hope that they will take this study as an attempt to
contribute, in however a small degree, to the solution of the many
problems given them by the flora of their country.
Finally I wish to express my respectful thanks to the Trustees of
the Carlsberg Foundation for granting the financial aid necessary for
the publication of this treatise.
Prague 1. V. 1947.