PREFA CE. - XXI 



Thus among mammals we find on the top of Hermon Arvicola mvau's, 

 identical with the mountain vole of the Alps and the Pyrenees. Among 

 the non-migrant birds occurs the exclusively alpine Montifriiigilla 

 nivalis, traced on the mountain tops from the Pyrenees to Ararat ; 

 Otocoris penicillata, a slightly modified form of Otocoris alpestris, and 

 which never leaves the snow-line ; Pyrrlwcorax alpiuus, an equally 

 sedentary form ; and several others which move up and down the moun- 

 tain sides according to the season are also found. These species on the 

 Lebanon and Hermon form in fact a boreal outlier. 



The flora, however, forms an exception here. The vegetation of the 

 summits of Lebanon is not analogous to that of the Alps of Europe and 

 India. More boreal plants may be gathered on the Himalayas at from 

 io,coo to 15,000 feet, than on the analogous heights of Lebanon, i.e., 

 from 8,000 to 10,000 feet. Three hundred flowers of the Arctic Circle 

 inhabit the ranges of Northern Lidia, while not half that number are 

 found on Lebanon, Sir J. D. Hooker accounts for this partly by the 

 heat and extreme dryness of the climate during a considerable part of the 

 year ; to the sudden desiccating influence of the desert winds ; and to the 

 sterile nature of the dry limestone soil ; but still more perhaps to the 

 warm period which succeeded the cold one, during which the glaciers 

 were formed ; and which may have obliterated the greater part of the 

 traces of the glacial flora. Several of these causes do not apply with 

 equal force to the fauna, with their powers of vertical migration which 

 enabled them to remain. There are other traces of a glacial fauna now 

 extinct, in the remains of Cervtts elaphus, C. tarandus, and Alces palinatus, 

 the Red-deer, Reindeer, and Elk, discovered in the breccia of cave floors 

 in the Lebanon. We may take these traces of the glacial inhabitants as 

 the representatives of the fauna which then overspread the whole country, 

 synchronous with the introduction of the Scandinavian flora now lingering 

 on the tops of the Scotch mountains, and with the deposition of the 

 Pleistocene deposits of Sicily and Cyprus. 



When afterwards the climatal conditions became less severe, the Medi- 

 terranean fauna and flora rapidly overspread the whole country, partly 

 by way of Asia Minor and the Greek Islands, pardy by way of Egypt, 

 just as the Germanic flora overspread the British Isles, and has given its 

 predominant character to the natural history of the country. 



