266 A HUNDRED YEARS 



nor even plants have as yet managed to cover the slabs 

 of glaciated rock, which have still nothing on them but 

 carried stones and boulders of every shape and size, just 

 as they were dropped on the slabs when the ice departed. 

 One cannot help wondering what the climate was like 

 when the ice began to disappear; if it was like the 

 climate of Switzerland in the present day — hot and dry 

 in summer, and cold and dry in winter — it would not 

 encourage a growth of peat. If, on the contrary, it was 

 cool and wet, it would encourage a growth of the sphagnum 

 mosses, which I look on as the main creators of peat. 



If the peat commenced to grow immediately on the 

 departure of the ice, it would be most likely that the low 

 grounds were then covered with Arctic plants, such as 

 Azalea frocumbens, Betula nana, Saxifraga oppositifolia, 

 which our present climate has banished to the highest 

 tops. Now, how interesting it would be if, when 

 microscopically examined, traces of the Azalea, for 

 instance, with its hard, twisted roots and stems, were 

 found at the bottom of the peat-bogs at the sea-level* 

 Last year I found quantities of yellow seeds at the base 

 of a nine-foot cutting in the solid peat. So I sent some 

 of them, all washed and clean, to the late Professor 

 Dickson of Edinburgh. He showed them to my friend 

 Mr. Lindsay, the curator of the Edinburgh Royal Botanic 

 Gardens, and said he had come to the conclusion that 

 some hoax had been played upon me, and that the seeds 

 were modern and not ancient. He was then just starting 

 on a tour to Norway, and on his return, sad to say, 

 Professor Pickson died, and I never heard any more of 

 my seeds. But I determined not to give up my interest 

 in them, so the other day I began looking for the seeds 



