MIOCENE ATLANTIS. 37 



the Sargassum were once there, there would be no diflficulty in admitting that the effect of the 

 streams or currents would be to keep it fenced in within their limits. And it would not bo necessary 

 for this that it should have originally occupied the whole of the space which it now does. Once 

 within it, although originally occupying only a small corner, it might have spread all over it 

 (the conditions of the ocean being there everySvhere similar), but coidd not pass the boundaries 

 of these currents. I therefore thiidc that to obtain a true explanation of the Sargasso Seas we 

 requii-e both Forbes and Humboldt's theories ; Forbes' to explain the original appearance of the 

 weed, Humboldt's its present limits. 



If we admit this, it follows that Gulf weed in the Atlantic indicates the submergence of land 

 somewhere in that ocean ; but it does not indicate where the submergence took place. It may not 

 have been within it at all. It niaj^ have been in the coiu-se of some of the surrounding currents, 

 and the weed which sprung from it may have been caught up and carried along by it until tossed 

 into the eddy, there to spread over the whole tranquil space. 



The fact, however, of the restriction of species within their original boimds, leads me to believe 

 that the starting-point or specific centre of this species, or this form of the Sarf/a-ssum vulrjarc, 

 if it be not a distinct species, and consequently the point of the disappearance of an ancient 

 coast of submerged land, must have probably been within the bounds of the Atlantic Sargasso. 

 It may not have been the miocene Atlantis ; that is, the route of communication between Europe 

 and North America ; but for aU that the weed may mark in whole or in part the site of submerged 

 land. 



If not on the site of the Gulf- weed where else can the Atlantis have been ? Heer and Unger, 

 while they do not adopt Forbes' idea, place it, as already said, across the widest and deepest part 

 of the North Atlantic, somewhat to the north of the Sargasso. 



I think it must have been still more to the north ; certainly it kept its last hold well to the 

 north, for all the species very closely allied, or common to both Europe and America, are northern 

 types ; not species which might have crossed from Andalusia or Algeria, to Florida, nor of so 

 extreme a polar character that they could have crossed by Greenland in its present climate, but 

 such as might have done so by Labrador or Nova Scotia. I imagine there must have been a 

 great extension of land on the European side of the Atlantic, reaching beyond the Azores, uniting 

 Spain and Ireland, and stretching westward by Newfoundland and its banks to Nova Scotia 

 and Labrador on the one hand, and northwards to Greenland and Spitzbergen on the other. 



It is not to be doubted that this arrangement of land and water must have greatly contributed 

 to the occurrence of the glacial epoch. It is also probable that the termination of that epoch 

 was due in part, if not entirely, to the sinking of a large part of this preponderance of land, 

 but that it had not wholly disappeared by the time the cold of the glacial epoch was in the wane. 

 If it were so, and the connexion between Greenland and Europe still subsisted, that would much 

 increase the probability that the connexion with America also subsisted to a greater or less ex- 

 tent for some time. Let us see what there is to be said in favour of this view. 



It is not difficult to show that such a connexion did continue between Greenland and Europe'. 

 In the first place, Greenland has a faima and flora which are not its own. "^Tience has it 

 received them? Singularlj^ enough they bear more than one impress. The manunalian fauna 

 and the ornis is American. The flora and entomology is European ; and these different phases 

 of organic life represent a different distribution of land and water when they were established. 



Of course when organic life began to replace the inanimate desolation left by the glacial epoch 



