378 NATURAL SCIENCE [December 



are confined as a rule to eastern and south-eastern England, and 

 none of which have been able to reach Ireland, are clearly the 

 newest. The Northern animals must therefore come between these 

 two in regard to the time when they entered our area. It will be 

 remembered that Forbes, when discussing the distributional groups 

 of British plants, regarded the most western (' Hibernian ') flora as 

 the oldest, the ' Germanic ' flora as the newest, and the arctic and 

 alpine flora as of intermediate age. Forbes, however, considered 

 the plants of general British distribution to have entered the country 

 subsequently to the arctic and alpine species. And as he observed 

 that there is a gradual transition from the most typical ' Germanic ' 

 to the most widely-spread ' British ' type, he regarded all the 

 immigrants since the Northern flora — that is to say the ' British,' 

 ' English ' and ' Germanic ' types of Watson, 1 as belonging to one 

 great central European flora, some of whose members have spread 

 much more widely in our islands than have others. Forbes, more- 

 over, separated two small groups of plants, one typical of Cornwall 

 and Devon (' Norman ' flora), the other characteristic of the chalk dis- 

 tricts of south-eastern England (' Kentish ' flora), which he believed 

 to be entirely distinct from the recent Germanic flora. To these 

 small sections he ascribed an age between that of the South-western 

 and that of the Northern flora. 



Dr Scharff's estimate of the relative ages of the sections of the 

 British fauna differs from Forbes' view of the ages of the corre- 

 sponding sections of the flora in one important particular. While 

 Forbes placed the bulk of our widespread plants later than the 

 arctic and alpine species, Dr Scharff considers that — at least as 

 regards the species found in Ireland — the vast majority of the 

 animals are of southern origin, and not more recent than the arctic 

 and alpine species. As mentioned above, he believes that there is 

 a gradual transition from animals of the most typical ' Hibernian' 

 type, such as Geomalacus maculosus, to such widespread animals of 

 his ' South-central ' group as the Badger and the Fox. 



The question of the exact geological period during which each 

 section of the fauna entered the British area, and by what route the 

 animals reached our territory, must now be considered. With regard 

 to the flora, Forbes believed that the Hibernian plants lived on a 

 now sunken Atlantis in Miocene times, and reached their present 

 Irish and Iberian stations from the west before the Ice Age. The 

 Cornish and Norman floras were supposed to have come into the 

 country from the south-west or south — of course across the dry area 

 of the Channel — also before the Ice Age. The arctic and alpine 

 plants, Forbes naturally thought to be the relics of the Glacial 

 Period itself. And he believed the rest of the British flora — the 



1 " Cybele Britaunica," London, 1870. 



