OF LABRADOR AND MAINE. 257 



of the climate, which must have been gradually ameliorating for two centuries past in the 

 north temperate zone, but more especially to their destruction by man. 



All the facts cited above must at least tend to disprove any theory of a former tertiary 

 or post-tertiary continental connection between Europe and America. The fauna and flora 

 of Labrador during the glacial period were too distinct, the oceanic currents could not have 

 allowed any interchange of forms, and the great depth of the sea in Baffin's Bay would have 

 prevented such migrations as Forbes supposed to have taken place from Europe. 



The geological history of the American continent, as laid down so clearly by Professor 

 Dana in the Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for 

 1856, proves that the different formations were, during paleozoic, mesozoic, and tertiary 

 times, built around the granitic laurentian nucleus of British America, and gradually pro- 

 ceeded southward. All the tertiary rocks form narrow strips of land along the coast. No 

 well-informed geologist can believe that the tertiary strata formed continuous sea bottoms, 

 — that, for instance, the miocene beds of Spitsbergen were continuous with those of Disco 

 Island in Greenland, or that the Greenland beds are a part of the miocene strata of the 

 southern States. Equally unfounded on general geological principles seems the theory of a 

 tertiary Atlantis, advanced at the present time, especially by Heer and others, though first 

 proposed by Forbes, to account for the distribution of life in the Azores, and the islands 

 lying off the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, the fauna as we go southward from 

 the arctic zone, becomes more and more distinct, and it is probable that such distinctions 

 obtained from the earliest palaeozoic times. The Silurian fauna of Europe is nearly as dis- 

 tinct from that of North America as the tertiary fauna of England and France is from that 

 of Virginia, as in the latter case insisted on by Sir Charles Lyell in the Quarterly Journal 

 of the Geological Society for 1845. 



During glacial times, while the cave-bear, lion, hyena, and aurochs were associated in 

 Europe with the musk-ox, reindeer, and polar bear, in America the bison characterized a 

 far different American sub-arctic fauna. It cannot be said that the glacial fauna of America 

 was derived by immigration from Europe, for not a single feature, peculiarly European in 

 its type, is found in our posMertiary beds. On the other hand, the glacial fauna of Northern 

 Europe was essentially arctic-european or " palsearctic." Because the musk-ox is found 

 fossil in the turbaries of France and gravels of Germany, it need not be inferred that the 

 European fauna of that period borrowed an American feature. We would rather suppose 

 that the former range of the musk-ox, a circumpolar species, was arctic-european as well 

 as American. In considering the origin of the flora of Labrador, though not possessing a 

 special knowledge of the botany, we would on general principles venture to dissent from 

 the view of Dr. Hooker, that the flora of northeastern Arctic America is essentially Scan- 

 dinavian in its origin. 



The flora of Labrador, so far as we were enabled to observe, follows closely the laws of 

 distribution of the land and sea animals; and any theory that separates the origin of the 

 two assemblages cannot be in accordance with the general laws of the distribution of life, 

 be it plant or animal, over the surface of the globe. The fauna of Australasia is no less 

 peculiar than its flora ; the flora of Brazil is characterized by its peculiar tropical American 

 forms, just as the fauna is circumscribed by peculiar features. So we must believe that the 

 origin of the arctic-european and arctic-american and arctic-asiatic floras and faunas was 

 distinct from the outset, and that they have never borrowed, by extensive inter-continental 

 migrations, each other's peculiar characteristics. As we have observed in regard to the ani- 



