58 Floivers and their Pedigrees. 



plant and ever}' animal now living in Britain must 

 have come into it after the end of the last long cold 

 spell — that is to say, roughly speaking, some 80,000 

 years since. 



Moreover, when Britain was repeopled after the 

 great ice age, it must have been united to the Conti- 

 nent somewhere, or else it could not possibly possess 

 the large number of European plants and animals 

 which it actually contains.' Had it then been an 

 island, it might have had a considerable population of 

 ferns and small-seeded flowers, of birds and winged 

 insects, blown over to it from the shores of France or 

 Holland ; it might even have had a fair sprinkling of 

 snails and lizards, or a few small quadrupeds, wafted 

 across on logs of wood, or carried over accidentally by 

 various chances ; but it would be quite impossible 

 that it should have all the species of large or middle- 

 sized wild mammals which we see now inhabiting it — 

 the red deer, the fallow deer, the otter, the badger, 

 the fox, the hare, the rabbit, the weasel, the stoat, the 

 marten, the hedgehog, the wild cat, the mole, the 

 shrew, the squirrel, and the water-vole. Altogether, 

 we have no less than forty species of British mammals ; 

 while the bear, the wild boar, the beaver, the reindeer, 



' I owe my acknowledgments in much that follows to Mr. A. K. 

 Wallace's admirable work on Island Life. 



