44 
ORIGIN OF LIFE IN AMERICA 
Four years later a valuable report on the Pleistocene fauna 
and flora of Canada was read at the British Association Meet¬ 
ing at Bradford by a committee which had been appointed to 
investigate the subject. Of this committee, Professor Cole¬ 
man and Professor Penhallow were members, as well as 
Sir William Dawson.* The number of beetles brought to light 
from the Scarboro’ Heights had now increased to seventy-two 
species, of which seventy were pronounced by Dr. Scudder to 
be extinct. The new species confirmed Dr. Scudder in the 
opinion, previously expressed, that on the whole the fauna 
has a boreal aspect, though by no means so decidedly boreal 
as one would anticipate. 
No less than eighty-three species of plants were studied 
from eighteen different localities, one of the plants, viz., Acer 
pleistocenicum, being extinct. The abundant occurrence of 
some species, such as the Osage orange (Maclura aurantiaca), 
the paw-paw (Asimina triloba) and others, point to the pre¬ 
valence of a much warmer climate than now prevails. On 
the other hand, the equally abundant occurrence of boreal 
types at Scarboro’ Heights suggests the existence of a cooler 
climate at the time these deposits were laid down. 
Once more, in 1907, Professor Penhallow f dwelt upon the 
results of his researches on the plant remains of the Don 
River beds, urging that, the same flora must have characterised 
the entire region between Virginia and Ontario in Pleistocene 
times, whilst a much warmer climate than at present pre¬ 
vailed. 
If similar evidence were brought to light from any other 
deposit than the Pleistocene, there can be no doubt as to the 
conclusions that would be drawn from it. The climate in 
boreal North America during the Pleistocene Period, as re¬ 
vealed by the plant and animal remains, must have been on the 
whole a temperate one. Yet geologists maintain, in the face 
of this testimony, that all these plant and animal remains only 
represent the so-called interglacial phase of the Glacial 
Epoch, during which the climate was supposed to have been 
temperate or mild. The other phase of the Ice Age, they 
* Dawson, J. W., D. P. Penhallow and others, “Canadian Pleistocene 
Fauna and Flora,” p. 334 — -338. 
t Penhallow, D. P., “ Pleistocene Flora of Canada,” pp. 443 — 4o0. 
