FAUNA OF NORTH ATLANTIC 
17 
the arctic flora had originated in Greenland in pre-Glacial 
times and had been scattered east and west across the exist¬ 
ing land bridges on the advent of the Glacial Epoch, during 
which the maintenance of life was no longer possible in that 
country. 
Sir Joseph Hooker* long ago expressed the opinion that, 
although many Greenland plants were possibly destroyed 
during the Ice Age, the existing remnant of a much richer 
flora had survived in the southern parts of the country, whence 
it subsequently spread northward again. 
One of the biological arguments I adduced in favour of a 
former north Atlantic land bridge was derived from the well- 
known fact that deposits of dead marine shallow-water species 
had been dredged in deep water in various localities such as 
Rockall Bank and off the coast of Iceland. This peculiar 
circumstance has been applied by several authorities in sup¬ 
port of the theory of a gradual sinking of the land, the 
shallow-water species having thus been moved to a position 
in which they are no longer able to live. It is this part of 
the biological argument on the land bridge theory which has 
received most of the adverse criticism. Dr. Johansen,f for 
instance, pointed out that the evidence derived from the 
marine shallow-water shells is untrustworthy, because their 
presence in great depths in the northern Atlantic is not due 
to a sinking of the land, but mainly to various casual or 
accidental activities of transport. The theory of the north 
Atlantic land bridge, in so far as it is founded upon the occur¬ 
rence of shallow-water marine shells at great depths, does 
not, therefore, meet with his approval. 
Similarly, Dr. AppellJ>f X insists that the most recent dis¬ 
coveries on the “ Faroe Bank” are of considerable zoogeo- 
,'graphical significance, since they are opposed in some 
measure to the theory of the sinking of the land. He informs 
us that among the thick layer of dead shallow shells found 
on the Faroe Bank living specimens of several of the species 
were met with. 
* Hooker, J. D., “ Distribution of Arctic Plants,” pp. 252—255. 
t Johansen, A. C., “On the Sinking of Sea,-beds,” p. 403. 
J Appelltf>f. A., “Norwegian Fisheries,” Yol. II., pp. 83—89. 
L.A. 
C 
