ORGANIC GEOLOGICAL DYNAMICS. 575 



iantic islands (the Asturian flora), is the record. The region between 

 Spain and Ireland, and the rest of this rneiocene continent, was 

 destroyed by some geological movement, but there were left traces of 

 the connexion which still remain. Eastwards of the flora just men- 

 tioned, there is a flora common to Devon and Cornwall, to the south- 

 east part of Ireland, the Channel Isles, and the adjacent provinces of 

 France ; a flora passing to a southern character ; and having its 

 course marked by the remains of a great rocky barrier, the destruction 

 of which probably took place anterior to the formation of the narrower 

 part of the channel. Eastward from this Devon or Norman flora, 

 again, we have the Kentish flora, which is an extension of the flora of 

 North-western France, insulated by the breach which formed the straits 

 of Dover. Then came the Glacial period, when the east of England 

 and the north of Europe were submerged, the northern drift was dis- 

 tributed, and England was reduced to a chain of islands or ridges, 

 formed by the mountains of Wales, Cumberland, and Scotland, which 

 were connected with the land of Scandinavia. This was the period of 

 glaciers, of the dispersion of boulders, of the grooving and scratching of 

 rocks as they are now found. The climate being then much colder 

 than it now is, the flora, even down to the water's edge, consisted of 

 Avhat are now Alpine plants ; and this Alpine flora is common to Scan- 

 dinavia and to our mountain-summits. And these plants kept their 

 places, when, by the elevation of the land, the whole of the present Ger- 

 man Ocean became a continent connecting Britain with central Europe. 

 For the increased elevation of their stations counterbalanced the dimi- 

 nished cold of the succeeding period. Along the dry bed of the 

 German Sea, thus elevated, the principal part of the existing flora of 

 England, the Germanic flora, migrated. A large portion of our exist- 

 ing animal population also came over through the same region ; and 

 along with those, came hyenas, tigers, rhinoceros, aurochs, elk, wolves, 

 beavers, which are extinct in Britain, and other animals which are 

 extinct altogether, as the primigenian elephant or mammoth. But 

 then, again, the German Ocean and the Irish Channel were scooped 

 out ; and the climate again changed. In our islands, so detached, 

 many of the larger beasts perished, and their bones were covered up 

 in peat-mosses and caves, where we find them. This distinguished 

 naturalist has further shown that the population of the sea lends itself 

 to the same view. Mr. Forbes says that the writings of Mr. Smith, of 

 Jordan-hill, " On the last Changes in the relative Levels of the Land 

 and Sea in the British Islands," published in the Meiiiuirx of the W?r 



