564 Dr. Michael Grabham [May 5,. 



peculiar species which have arisen in the islands from introduced 

 primeval forms. 



I can only in one brief discourse touch upon a few examples in 

 the flora which are typical and representative, but unless these 

 examples come from ancestors now long extinct I can suggest no 

 satisfactory cause of their specific evolution other than environment, 

 though their complete segregation would tend to preserve incipient 

 features of variation and protect them from reversion due to crossing 

 back into original stocks. 



A period of 500 years is almost negligible in any geological time 

 estimate ; you have only to look along the Downs at Eastbourne to 

 realize the stability of existing conditions, for we have here clear 

 historical evidence that the surface of the chalk, with its thin film of 

 covering soil, has undergone no tangible change since Caesar fixed his 

 camp there 2000 years ago, and we may reasonably assume both that 

 the same conditions existed for many thousands of years previously, 

 and that they may endure into an equally prolonged futurity. Let 

 us reflect that since that mouldering Roman camp was peopled, the 

 whole history of our race and civilization has been enacted, and that 

 our literature, our traditions, our knowledge of things celestial 

 and terrestrial and our faculties of appreciation have developed, and 

 probably have culminated, during this minute portion of a transient 

 episode of the earth's surface history. My desire in this geological 

 digression is to convey to your minds an idea of the conditions, if 

 time is a condition, involved in the evolution and stabilizing of the 

 specific living forms which characterize the district I am represent- 

 ing. 



It is less bewildering to believe that these special forms of life 

 were brought to us in pots from the Garden of Eden than to trace 

 their true descent in the dim and distant past from ancestral forms 

 which no longer survive. The Testaceae you can compare with ancient 

 types in fossil beds, but the flora has no such satisfactory appeal. 



I ask you to look upon these beautiful specimens of Oreodaphne,. 

 Persea and Clethra wood, whose stately trees still adorn our mountain 

 side, and which originally gave the island the name of Madeira, in 

 reference to the superb timber materia with which it was clothed. 

 Total destruction of the surviving forests has been checked during 

 the last 150 years by the introduction of the common Pinaster, which 

 grows quickly on waste mountain ground and supplies fuel and wood 

 for many purposes ; and the scanty presence of conifers in the native 

 flora has been recently substantially supplemented by the introduction 

 of Pinus Ins ignis, Gupressus Macrocarpa, and many others which 

 forty years ago I began to plant and whose importance is now fully 

 realized. 



A second Persea — gratissima — which you will know as the 

 Alligator pear-tree, is now everywhere cultivated, and I have tiied 

 to increase its range of growth by grafting it upon the wilder Persea 



