378 NATURAL SCIENCE [December 
are confined as a rule to eastern and south-eastern England, and 
none of which have been able to reach Ireland, are clearly the 
newest. The Northern animals must therefore come between these 
two in regard to the time when they entered our area. It will be 
remembered that Forbes, when discussing-the distributional groups 
of British plants, regarded the most western (‘ Hibernian’) flora as 
the oldest, the ‘Germanic’ flora as the newest, and the arctic and 
alpine flora as of intermediate age. Forbes, however, considered 
the plants of general British distribution to have entered the country 
subsequently to the arctic and alpine species. And as he observed 
that there is a gradual transition from the most typical ‘ Germanic’ 
to the most widely-spread ‘ British’ type, he regarded all the 
immigrants since the Northern flora—that is to say the ‘ British, 
‘English’ and ‘Germanic’ types of Watson,’ as belonging to one 
great central European flora, some of whose members have spread 
much more widely in our islands than have others. Forbes, more- 
over, separated two small groups of plants, one typical of Cornwall 
and Devon (‘ Norman’ flora), the other characteristic of the chalk dis- 
tricts of south-eastern England (‘ Kentish’ flora), which he believed 
to be entirely distinct from the recent Germanic flora. To these 
small sections he ascribed an age between that of the South-western 
and that of the Northern flora. 
Dr Scharff’s estimate of the relative ages of the sections of the 
British fauna differs from Forbes’ view of the ages of the corre- 
sponding sections of the flora in one important particular. While 
Forbes placed the bulk of our widespread plants later than the 
aretic and alpine species, Dr Scharff considers that—at least as 
regards the species found in Ireland—the vast majority of the 
animals are of southern origin, and not more recent than the arctic 
and alpine species. As mentioned above, he believes that there is 
a gradual transition from animals of the most typical ‘ Hibernian’ 
type, such as Geomalacus maculosus, to such widespread animals of 
his ‘ South-central’ group as the Badger and the Fox. 
The question of the exact geological period during which each 
section of the fauna entered the British area, and by what route the 
animals reached our territory, must now be considered. With regard 
to the flora, Forbes believed that the Hibernian plants lived on a 
now sunken Atlantis in Miocene times, and reached their present 
Irish and Iberian stations from the west before the Ice Age. The 
Cornish and Norman floras were supposed to have come into the 
country from the south-west or south—of course across the dry area 
of the Channel—also before the Ice Age. The arctic and alpine 
plants, Forbes naturally thought to be the relics of the Glacial 
Period itself. And he believed the rest of the British flora—the 
1 “Cybele Britannica,’’ London, 1870. 
