28 Origin of the British Flora. 



greater continuity of the land. The difficulty is so real 

 that I have devoted particular attention to the attempt to 

 discover in what manner large soft seeds, which cannot be 

 carried in fur or feathers, and are killed by digestion, can 

 be transported across deserts. It will be shown in Chapter 

 IV. that since suitable climatic conditions came into 

 existence there has been no sufficient change of land or 

 sea to give a continuous land passage from the Continent 

 for these plants — yet, here they are and their presence 

 must be explained. 



The British plants to which these remarks particularly 

 apply are the following : — the Oak, Beech, Ash, Maple, 

 Privet, Spindle Tree, Ivy, Flags, Convolvulus, various 

 Mallows, White and Yellow Waterlilies, and Apple. In 

 each of these, except sometimes in the Waterlilies and 

 Apple, the fruit is eaten for the nutriment contained in the 

 seed itself, which is therefore generally destroyed. No 

 doubt in many of these plants the seeds are occasionally 

 dispersed by rivers ; but this will only scatter them along 

 the lower part of the same river-basin or at most some 

 distance along shore ; it will not carry Waterlilies to 

 isolated lakes or to other river basins, nor can dry-soil 

 plants be carried thus to scattered islands. 



The largest edible seed we have is the acorn ; if it can 

 be transported freely for considerable distances uninjured, 

 the difficulty in the other cases must be more apparent 

 than real. In peat-mosses, on open chalk downs, and in 

 ploughed fields, often a mile or more from the nearest 

 mature tree, one constantly finds seedling Oaks, which last 

 a few months or, perhaps, a couple of years, and then die, 

 the conditions being unfavourable. I have for several 

 years noted the position of these seedling oaks, finding 

 them in places where no mammal would take the acorns. 

 For instance, they are common in any of the New Forest 



