^HE PALMS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD. 187 



01* Lapland, fill our mountain valle}'.? with 

 glaciers, and our seas with icebergs. On 

 the other hand, let us suppose that instead 

 of the changes we have imagined, Greenland 

 and Spitzbergen were to be so sunk that 

 the waves of the ocean rolled over them, 

 and that a corresponding portion of the ocean 

 bed were raised so as to become dry land in 

 the North Atlantic Ocean, in the neighbour- 

 hood of the tropic of Cancer, it would be 

 difficult to estimate the full amount of the 

 change which would be produced in the climate 

 of our island. And this effect would be the more 

 striking if some part of the continent of Europe 

 were broken up into a cluster of islands. Palms, 

 bananas, oranges, rice, and cotton might then 

 be, doubtless, cultivated with advantage in 

 Ensfland, so warm would the climate have 

 become. The vine might revel in our woods 

 as richly as it does in those of Armenia, and 

 our native wines might rival the choicest pro- 

 ductions of the south of Europe. Here, then, 

 we conceive, is a most satisfactory solution 

 (theory though it be) of this most singular and 

 apparently difficult problem — that palms, ba- 

 nanas, cocoa nuts, and other tropical fruits, 

 should once have owned our cold clime as theif 

 genial home. 



