44 ORIGIN OF LIFE IN AMERICA 



Four years later a valuable report on the Pleistocene fauna 

 and flora of Canada was read, at the British Association Meet- 

 ing at Bradford by a committee which had been appointed to 

 investigate the subject. Of this committee, Professor Cole- 

 man and Professor Penhallow were members, as well as 

 Sir William Dawson.* The number of beetles brought to light 

 from the Scarboro' Heights had now increased to seventy-two 

 species, of which seventy were pronounced by Dr. Scudder to 

 be extinct. The new species confirmed Dr. Scudder in the 

 opinion, previously expressed, that on the whole the fauna 

 has a boreal aspect, though by no means so decidedly boreal 

 as one would anticipate. 



No less than eighty-three species of plants were studied 

 from eighteen different localities, one of the plants, viz., Acer 

 pleistocenicum, being extinct. The abundant occurrence of 

 some species, such as the Osage orange (Maclura aurantiaca), 

 the paw-paw (Asimina triloba) and others, point to the pre- 

 valence of a much warmer climate than now prevails. On 

 the other hand, the equally abundant occurrence of boreal 

 types at Scarboro' Heights suggests the existence of a cooler 

 climate at the time these deposits were laid down. 



Once more, in 1907, Professor Penhlallow f dwelt upon the 

 results of his researches on the plant remains of the Don 

 River beds, urging that the same flora must have characterised 

 the entire region between Virginia and Ontario in Pleistocene 

 times, whilst a much warmer climate than at present pre- 

 vailed. 



If similar evidence were brought to light from any other 

 deposit than the Pleistocene, there can be no doubt as to the 

 conclusions that would be drawn from it. The climate in 

 boreal North America during the Pleistocene Period, as re- 

 vealed by the plant and animal remains, must have been on the 

 whole a temperate one. Yet geologists maintain, in the face 

 of this testimony, that all these plant and animal remains only 

 represent the so-called interglacial phase of the Glacial 

 Epoch, during which the climate was supposed to have been 

 temperate or mild. The other phase of the Ice Age, they 



* Dawson, J. W., D. P. Penhallow and others, "Canadian Pleistocene 

 Fauna and Flora," p. 334338. 



t Penhaltow, D. P., " Pleistocene Flora of Canada," pp. 443 450. 



