vii.] THE MOST ANCIENT FORMS. 167 



Now what a variety of interesting questions are 

 opened up by these simple facts. How did these three 

 floras get each to its present place ? Where did each 

 come from ? How did it get past or through the other, 

 till each set of plants, after long internecine compe- 

 tition, settled itself down in the sheet of land most 

 congenial to it ? And when did each come hither ? 

 Which is the oldest ? Will any one tell me whether 

 the healthy floras of the moors, or the thymy flora of the 

 chalk downs, were the earlier inhabitants of these isles ? 

 To these questions I cannot get any answer; and 

 they cannot be answered without, first a very careful 

 study of the range of each species of plant on the 

 continent of Europe ; and next, without careful study 

 of those stupendous changes in the shape of this island 

 which have taken place at a very late geological epoch. 

 The composition of the flora of our moorlands is as yet 

 to me an utter puzzle. We have Lycopodiums three 

 species enormously ancient forms which have survived 

 the age of ice : but did they crawl downward hither 

 from the northern mountains or upward hither from 

 the Pyrenees ? We have the beautiful bog asphodel 

 again an enormously ancient form ; for it is, strange 

 to say, common to North America and to Northern 

 Europe, but does not enter Asia almost an unique 

 instance. It must, surely, have come from the north ; 

 and points as do many species of plants and animals 

 to the time when North Europe and North America 

 were joined. We have, sparingly, in North Hampshire, 

 though, strangely, not on the Bagshot moors, the Com- 

 mon or Northern Butterwort (Pinguicula vulgaris); 

 and also, in the south, the New Forest part of the 

 county, the delicate little Pinguicula lusitanica, the 



