The Scottish Naturalist. 195 



ture than the present ; while others may point simply to such a 

 climate as might even now result, were Britain to become once 

 more continental. The successions of buried trees, marking so 

 many old land- surfaces, which the deeper peat of Britain and the 

 Continent have yielded, is sufficient proof that the climate of 

 post-glacial times did certainly undergo some changes. 



During a recent visit to the Faeroe Islands, in company with my 

 friend Mr Amund Helland, I was much struck with the appear- 

 ance in the peat of numerous roots and branches which, in the 

 absence of the bark, we could not determine, although we 

 thought they were most probably juniper. None that we noticed 

 exceeded the thickness of one's wrist ; but an intelligent merchant 

 told me he had frequently seen them as thick as his arm, and 

 sometimes even as thick as his leg. At present the only shrubs 

 in the islands are the few which stand within the garden-walls 

 at Thorshavn, where they are carefully tended and protected. 

 Yet the evidence of the peat proves that in post-glacial times the 

 climate was such as to permit of a plentiful growth of shrubs and 

 small trees over all the less considerable slopes of the islands. 

 A similar tale is told by the peat of northern Norway; and even 

 in Spitzbergen, we are not without botanical testimony to the 

 former prevalence of a milder climate than the present. When 

 the Fseroe Islands were plentifully clothed with shrubs and small 

 trees, they could hardly have been subjected to the strong winds 

 which now sweep over them, forbidding the growth of all 

 arboreal vegetation. Now, as there can be no doubt that the 

 " buried trees " of the F^eroe Islands belong approximately to 

 the same date as those of our own islands and north-western 

 Europe, it seems impossible to resist the conclusion that the 

 climate of those regions in the post-glacial period must have been, 

 for some time at least., considerably more genial than it is now. 



It is quite certain that a mere extension of the land-surface 

 could not have been the cause of those genial conditions. We 

 must look elsewhere for an explanation of the phenomena ; nor 

 is that far to seek. It is a well-known fact that in our northern 

 seas there occur several Mediterranean molluscs which look 

 strangely out of place : they have been dredged off the coast of 

 the Outer Hebrides ; and further north we meet with similar start- 

 ling finds in Norwegian waters. Now if we cross the Atlantic 

 to the Gulf of St Lawrence, we encounter the same phenomenon. 

 Professor Verrill has shown that there are genuine colonies of 

 southern species in that Gulf, and on the coast of Nova Scotia, 



