THE SUBMERGED FOREST. G# 



peculiar to the pre-glacial age. They are so numerous 

 in species, and so fairly represent the fauna and flora of 

 the Continent, that they must have entered Britain from 

 the mainland by a broad ridge or isthmus at a period sub- 

 sequent to the great ice age ; and there is every reason 

 to believe that the earliest race, of men now inhabiting 

 the island also entered it at the same period. 



Had not such a bridge existed later than the time 

 when the old fauna was killed off by the ice just as thor- 

 oughly as the temperate fauna of Greenland is killed 

 off in our own time, it would be impossible to account 

 for the presence of so many Continental animals, large 

 and small, as we actually find in Britain. A few deer 

 and a few rats might have swum over ; but that all our 

 shrews, foxes, badgers, hedgehogs, hares, rabbits, moles, 

 squirrels, weasels, stoats, martens, field-mice, lizards, 

 snakes, and other mammals or reptiles, could have come 

 across by mere accident is incredible. Still less can we 

 believe that our 120 species of snails and our numerous 

 insects were introduced in such a fortuitous way. The 

 straits which divide the Australian from the Javan and 

 Indian fauna are scarcely wider than the strait which 

 separates England from the Continent ; yet not one 

 Indian species of mammal has ever found its way into 

 Australia, nor one Australian species into the Javan and 

 Indian region. There can be little doubt, therefore, that 

 these submerged forests, almost modem in their appear- 

 ance and overlying the glacial gravels, are relics of the 

 land surface which once connected us with the Conti- 

 nent on the one hand and with Ireland on the other. If 

 it be asked why, with such a wide connection existing 

 at so late a date, we should lack so many Continental 

 mammals, the answer is that in a small and thickly 

 peopled area like England many of them have been 



