1907. Moffat. — The Problems of an Island Fauna, 145 



" British " to the smaller area of Great Britain without 

 Ireland, I felt at once that such a proposal would raise a 

 great difficulty as to what to do with the Isle of Man. Does 

 it belong to the British, or to the Irish part of the Britannic 

 area ? I feel that difficulty still ; but I do not think the case 

 of the Sand Lizard, which is almost the only Manx animal 

 not found in Ireland, should suffice to exclude the Isle of 

 Man from what seems to me to be, on the whole, its natural 

 place in the Irish area. For this little reptile is very possibly 

 just another such case as the Natterjack Toad, which must 

 have been once more generally diffused, but which now sur- 

 vives in only one spot in its ancient Irish range— the sole 

 difference being that, in the case of the Lizard, the place of 

 survival within the area happens to be not in Kerry, but in 

 the Isle of Man. At any rate, if we insist on regarding the 

 very large number of British species which are absentees 

 from the Irish list, as a great invading army which the sea 

 prevented from reaching our own shore, it cannot but strike 

 us as a strange circumstance that the only member — or very 

 nearly the only member — of that army to win for itself a 

 footing in the Isle of Man should have been this very uu- 

 adventurous little lizard, which, even in England, is 

 restricted to quite a few' localities, and shows not the smallest 

 disposition to become anywhere a dominant or advancing 

 species. 



Both Great Britain and Ireland certainly have lost, within 

 times that w T ere at least subsequent to the beginning of the 

 Glacial Age, a considerable number of species, which are 

 shown by the explorers of our caves to have flourished here 

 while we had still a continental connection. How they came 

 to die out — wmether from change of climate, from partial sub- 

 mergence, from increased competition with new forms, or 

 through the operation of some cause quite different from any 

 of these — we cannot say. But I do think it is a mistake to 

 assume that the insulation of the British and Irish areas has 

 affected our fauna and flora in no other way than by pre- 

 venting the advent of new species. We have to explain how 

 we have lost, as well as how we have failed to gain. 



Dublin. 



