THE PINE AND OTHER CONIFERS. 295 



with particular mountains. Both in America and Asia 

 the same sort of Coniferous belts occur perpetually. 

 The Mammoth trees {Sequoias) and the Araucaria forests 

 of Chili, as well as the Deodars of the Himalayas, 

 occupy ground which has not yet been reached by a 

 Dicotyledon capable of overshadowing them. Even in 

 the extreme southern regions, verging on the Antarctic, 

 the Kauri forests of New Zealand are still an important 

 Coniferous region. In all these cases the Conifers are 

 in the position of a " Celtic fringe." In some few 

 localities they have, like the Swamp Cypress, been 

 driven to the water ; so that, in this last case, their 

 history resembles that of the crannog builders, or of 

 the early Venetian refugees. They only survive in 

 their present position, because they are able to maintain 

 existence by such extraordinary adaptations as roots 

 intended for respiration. 



It is not difficult to understand why they now 

 occupy such places, if we remember the botanical 

 history of Britain. This latter subject is well 

 described in an invaluable work by Mr. Clement Reid 

 {Origins of the British Flora). It is known that 

 seventy-five of our modern species were in Britain 

 before the commencement of the Great Ice Age. 

 These are of course only a fragmentary Flora, consist- 

 ing of those which happened to be preserved under 

 specially favourable conditions. They are chiefly 

 water and marsh plants, such as the Bog Bean {Menyan- 

 thes), the Water-milfoil {Myriophylluni), the Homwort 

 {Cer'atophylliivi), and the Marsh Violet. The first three 

 have been detected in remains of early glacial, inter- 

 glacial, late glacial, neolithic, and Roman times. They 

 still exist in apparently exactly the same sort of places 

 that they frequented in those days. 



