44 M. Martins on the Vegetable Colonisation of the 



North Sea, and along the eastern coasts, where the Ger- 

 manic type predominates. Finally, the large Cetacese, such 

 as the whales, narwals, and dolphins of the arctic seas, seem 

 to respect, even in the bosom of the ocean, the ideal limit 

 which separates the northern vegetation of Scotland and Eng- 

 land from the more southern floras of Cornwall and the South 

 of Ireland. 



Hitherto naturalists have seen nothing more in this dis- 

 tribution of living beings, according to certain determinate 

 regions, than a natural consequence of the all-powerful in- 

 fluences of climate and soil. If some plants of the Asturias 

 maintain themselves in the south of Ireland, it is owing, they 

 alleged, to the circumstance of their finding there the tem- 

 perate winters of the Iberian peninsula, and the summers of 

 Ireland, though without great heat, were sufiicient to ripen 

 their seeds. In like manner, the plants of Bretagne and Nor- 

 mandy have been able to pass the strait and occupy Corn- 

 wall and Devonshire, w^here a climate prevails analogous to 

 that of their native country. The hardy vegetables of Ger- 

 many have found, in the middle regions of England, in the 

 south of Scotland and north of Ireland, conditions of exist- 

 ence analogous to those of the north of Germany and France ; 

 hence their multiplication and diffusion in the greater part 

 of the British Islands. Finally, the rocks, turfy slopes, peat- 

 bogs, and marshes of Scotland, offered varied stations, cool 

 summers, the long sleep of winter, and the protecting snows 

 of the polar lands, to the arctic plants. 



Mr Edward Forbes is not contented with these explana- 

 tions ; he has found a deeper sense for the existence of these 

 foreign types which constitute the fauna and flora of the Bri- 

 tish Islands. He imagines that he finds in it the vestiges of 

 an order of things which no longer exists, — proofs of the ex- 

 istence of warmer or colder climates than the present, — ^the 

 indications of a configuration of the lands and seas, the marks 

 of which are concealed from our view by the depths of the 

 ocean. Let us follow him in his ingenious and skilful re- 

 searches. Penetrating for the first time into a new field, he 

 may often have mistaken the path. But he connects, with a 

 powerful hand, the past history of our globe with the present; 



