1897] THE PROBLEMS OF BRITISH FAUNA 385 



the Glacial Period, we are forced to the conclusion that its shores 

 must, since then, have formed part of the northern coasts of a 

 gulf opening to the south, down St George's Channel. As the 

 climatic conditions improved, I believe that many animals of the 

 old South-western fauna — such as Helix piscina, Euryncbria com- 

 planctfdj Otwrrhynchus auropunctatus — which had doubtless lived to 

 the south of England and Ireland from Pliocene times, were able 

 to make their way northwards along the shores of this ever-widen- 

 ing gulf to their present stations on the eastern Irish and western 

 British shores. North of this gulf, I believe that the vast majority 

 •of our present widespread species passed from north-western Eng- 

 land into Ireland, where they have spread from east to west. The 

 difficulty raised by Dr Scharff that the ' Siberian ' mammals were 

 in England, and should have passed over to Ireland with the rest, 

 is doubtless serious. But these mammals were kept out of Scotland 

 until recent times, and they may well have been kept out of north- 

 western England by an arm of the sea until the Irish land-con- 

 nection had broken down. One of them, the English Hare, inhabits 

 the Isle of Man, showing that the barrier which confined them to 

 the east had been removed in time for that one species to spread so 

 far, though not as far as to Ireland. The fact that the other 

 mammals of the group — -such as the Voles and the Mole — are 

 absent from the Isle of Man proves that the Hare must have made 

 the most of her chance to spread north-westward. 



While, then, I find myself in almost complete agreement with 

 Dr Scharff with regard to the older sections of our fauna, I think 

 that those widespread species which survived the Glacial Period 

 must have been confined to the more southern parts of our area, and 

 have only subsequently spread northwards and westwards to Scot- 

 land and Ireland. Doubtless the speculations of the extreme glacial 

 school regarding the total extinction of all life in our countries in 

 Pleistocene times need revision in the light of the past and present 

 •distribution of species. At the same time there seems enough 

 agreement among those who have specially studied the drift 

 ■deposits to warn students of animal distribution that the conditions 

 over much of the British Islands must have been unfavourable to 

 the presence of a rich flora and fauna. 



But in any case it seems to us a necessity to believe that a 

 considerable proportion of the British flora and fauna did survive 

 the Glacial Period in our area, or in the now submerged tracts 

 adjacent thereto. Readers of Natural Science will doubtless recall 

 Mr G. W. Bulman's paper, 1 in which a plea was entered for the 

 pre-Glacial age of our animals and plants on the ground that no 

 geological evidence of an elevation subsequent to the Ice Age could 



1 Vol. iii., pp. 261-6. 



