;^6 Origin of the British Flora. 



We cannot speak confidently on the point, but the 

 evidence suggests that the general outline of the British 

 Isles did not greatly differ from that which now holds, 

 the principal difference probably being, that the Strait of 

 Dover had not then been cut, and that England was 

 connected with Belgium and Holland by a wide alluvial 

 plain. The legible records of the period here referred to 

 are confined to the eastern part of the counties of Norfolk 

 and Suffolk, though deposits probably of the same age, 

 but containing no fossils, occur in several other of the 

 eastern and southern counties. At one spot only, outside 

 East Anglia, are fossils apparently of this age to be found. 

 Dewlish, in Dorset, has yielded a few bones of the 

 characteristic elephant, Elephas meridionalis ; but no other 

 fossils could be discovered. If the deposit is of the same 

 age of the Forest-bed, it certainly suggests that the main 

 contours of the land were already shaped ; though most of 

 the valleys, in that region at any rate, are of later date. 

 The climate indicated by the plants and animals of the 

 Cromer Forest-bed is very like that which we now enjoy; 

 the warmth of the Miocene and early Pliocene Periods had 

 passed away, but the cold of the Glacial Epoch had not 

 yet swept off the numerous large mammals, nor trans- 

 formed the character of the vegetation. 



The Pliocene Period, with its temperate and gradually 

 cooling climate, was separated from the present era by a 

 period of which the exact history is still obscure. We 

 know that this Pleistocene Period was characterised by 

 more than one wave of intense cold, which, for a time 

 must profoundly have modified the fauna and flora of 

 Britain. It was also marked by milder intervals, suffi- 

 ciently long for the temperate plants to re-appear ; and 

 also by a period of drought, which brought the fauna of 

 Central Asia into continental Europe, and in a minor 



