1897] THE PROBLEMS OF BRITISH FAUNA 385 
the Glacial Period, we are forced to the conclusion that its shores 
must, since then, have formed part of the northern coasts of a 
eulf opening to the south, down St George’s Channel. As the 
climatic conditions improved, I believe that many animals of the 
old South-western fauna—such as Helix pisana, Eurynebria com- 
planata, Otiorrhynchus awropunctatus—which had doubtless lived to 
the south of England and Ireland from Pliocene times, were able 
to make their way northwards along the shores of this ever-widen- 
ing gulf to their present stations on the eastern Irish and western 
British shores. North of this gulf, I believe that the vast majority 
of our present widespread species passed from north-western Eng- 
land into Ireland, where they have spread from east to west. The 
difficulty raised by Dr Scharff that the ‘Siberian’ mammals were 
in England, and should have passed over to Ireland with the rest, 
is doubtless serious. But these mammals were kept out of Scotland 
until recent times, and they may well have been kept out of north- 
western England by an arm of the sea until the Irish land-con- 
nection had broken down. One of them, the English Hare, inhabits 
the Isle of Man, showing that the barrier which confined them to 
the east had been removed in time for that one species to spread so 
far, though not as far as to Ireland. The fact that the other 
mammals of the group—such as the Voles and the Mole—are 
absent from the Isle of Man proves that the Hare must have made 
the most of her chance ‘to spread north-westward. 
While, then, I find myself in almost complete agreement with 
Dr Scharff with regard to the older sections of our fauna, I think 
that those widespread species which survived the Glacial Period 
must have been confined to the more southern parts of our area, and 
have only subsequently spread northwards and westwards to Scot- 
land and Ireland. Doubtless the speculations of the extreme glacial 
school regarding the total extinction of all life in our countries in 
Pleistocene times need revision in the light of the past and present 
distribution of species. At the same time there seems enough 
agreement among those who have specially studied the drift 
deposits to warn students of animal distribution that the conditions 
over much of the British Islands must have been unfavourable to 
the presence of a rich flora and fauna. 
But in any case it seems to us a necessity to believe that a 
considerable proportion of the British flora and fauna did survive 
the Glacial Period in our area, or in the now submerged tracts 
adjacent thereto. Readers of Natural Science will doubtless recall 
Mr G. W. Bulman’s paper,’ in which a plea was entered for the 
pre-Glacial age of our animals and plants on. the ground that no 
geological evidence of an elevation subsequent to the Ice Age could 
1 Vol. iii., pp. 261-6. 
