246 The Irhh Naturalist. [November, 



phenomena may be manifested in the same species at the same time, 

 which seem to show that Dr. Scharff appreciates the difference between 

 them ; but right through the work he uses the word migration to apply 

 to very different processes. It seems to us that it is high time that 

 we should distinguish them, and that we should restrict the word 

 " migration " to the periodic and seasonal movements. For the other 

 two we might, perhaps, suggest such words as " irruption 1 " and 

 " dispersal." 



The Lusitanian group is but poorly, if at all, represented among Irish 

 mammals ; and this review has already reached such a length that we 

 have hardly time to allude to its other constituents, or to the Oriental 

 group in which Dr. Scharff would include such vertebrates as the Red 

 Deer, the Fallow Deer, the Pheasant, the Fire-crested Wren ; such mollusca 

 as Buliminus pupa, and such plants as the Cedars. In the Lusitanian 

 section he includes the Dartford Warbler, Bearded Titmouse, Natterjack 

 Toad, the Brimstone Butterfly {Gonopteryx rhamni) the slug Geomalacus 

 maculosus, the species of Testacclla, the blind Woodlouse, Platya rthr us ; and 

 among plants the Strawberry tree, Arbutus Unedo, the Mediterranean 

 Heath, and the Irish Spurge, Euphorbia hiberna. 



One point at all events strikes us after reading the distribution of the 

 various groups, and how Mediterranean forms, such as some of the above, 

 hold their own in the south-west of England and on the west and 

 north-west coastal districts of Ireland. It is the reality of the existence 

 of what the Americans would call a Transitional, and we a Mediterranean 

 region, inside the limits of which, if it be ever taken to include all forms 

 of life, must certainly be included parts of the western and south-western 

 sea-board of the British Islands. 



We must conclude this notice with a word of warning. The subject is 

 one of such immense difficulty, and one beset by so many complications, 

 that it may well be that all our present beliefs may one day have to go 

 to the wall. It may well be, as Dr. Scharff has suggested, that our 

 fauna and flora, or much of it, is Pre-glacial ; but, inclined as we are to 

 believe him, we cannot help emphasising the great distance of time which 

 undoubtedly separates us from the Glacial Period, as shown, for instance, 

 by the result of the excavations made by a Committee of the British 

 Association at Hoxne, in Bast Anglia. 3 Even the immensely ancient 

 palaeolithic implements of Hoxne are separated from the chalky Boulder 

 clay by two distinct climatic waves accompanied by corresponding 

 changes of flora ! Who then can say that the long ages, the meagre 

 history of which we owe to these excavations, may not some day be 

 shown to have been of sufficient duration for the occurrence of all the 

 changes and complications in our fauna and flora which form the subject 

 of Dr. Scharft's volume ? G. E. H. B.-H. 



' A word used many years ago by Professor Newton with reference to 

 the Sand-Grouse. 



2 See Report of Sir John Evans' Committee to British Association at 

 Liverpool in 1896. 



