FLORA. 199 



generally a great uniformity of aspect and composition, 

 the conclusion is irresistible that after the emergences from 

 the ocean of dry land upon a considerable scale, which 

 followed the palaeozoic times, the Arctic lands, now cut 

 up into archipelagos, must have formed part of a Polar 

 continent of sufficient extent to allow of fresh water having 

 been able there to play a predominating part, and of deep 

 lakes and important rivers having become established 

 there; and we are shut up to the conclusion that one and 

 the same vegetation, without other divergencies than any 

 arising from slight local diversities, occupied the whole 

 extent of this continent, under each of the ages in which 

 these fossils were deposited.' 



At an International Congress of Students of Geographi- 

 cal Science, which was held in Paris in the autumn of 

 1875, a paper on this ancient Polar vegetation, based on 

 the discoveries of the Swedish explorers and the work of 

 Dr Heer, was read by Count G. de Saporta. 



In this paper, referring to the views advanced by 

 Buffon,at a time when as yet geological ideas were merely 

 speculative without any basis of such observations as have 

 since been made, in which he alleged that the earth in 

 cooling must have cooled most rapidly in the Polar 

 regions, and that lands in the extreme north ' must have 

 enjoyed the same temperature which is enjoyed now by 

 lands further to the south,'* he says that this is substan- 

 tially correct, though facts present themselves to geologists 

 differently from what they did to the mind of Buffon. 



For the information of those to whom such studies may 

 be altogether new, and I anticipate that such there may 

 be amongst my readers, who may reside far from towns 

 and libraries containing books in which thoy may find 

 the information pre-supposed to be in possession of readers 



* Buffon Des Epoqites de la Nature ; Hist. Sat. Gen. et Part. 1778. Suppl. T, ix, 

 p. 86. 



