BEITISH AND FOREIGN 135 



west country generally. This class belongs by origin to 

 the submerged land of Lyonesse, the warm champaign 

 country that once spread westward over the Bay of Biscay, 

 and derived from the Gulf Stream the genial climate still 

 preserved by its last remnants at Tresco and St. Mary's. 

 The animals belonging to this secondary stratum of our 

 British population are few and rare, but of its plants there 

 are not a few, some of them extending over the whole 

 western shores of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, 

 wherever they are washed by the Gulf Stream, and others 

 now confined to particular spots, often with the oddest 

 apparent capriciousness. Thus, two or three southern 

 types of clover are peculiar to the Lizard Point, in Corn- 

 wall ; a little Spanish and Italian restharrow has got 

 stranded in the Channel Islands and on the Mull of 

 Galloway ; the spotted rock-rose of the Mediterranean 

 grows only in Kerry, Galway, and Anglesea ; while other 

 plants of the same warm habit are confined to such spots 

 as Torquay, Babbicombe, Dawlish, Cork, Swansea, Ax- 

 minster, and the Scilly Isles. Of course, all peninsulas 

 and islands are warmer in temperature than inland places, 

 and so these relics of the lost Lyonesse have survived here 

 and there in Cornwall, Carnarvonshire, Kerry, and other 

 very projecting headlands long after they have died out 

 altogether from the main central mass of Britain. South- 

 western Ireland in particular is almost Portuguese in the 

 general aspect of its fauna and flora. 



Third and latest of all in time, though almost con- 

 temporary with the southern type, is the central European 

 or Germanic element in our population. Sad as it is to 

 confess it, the truth must nevertheless be told, that our 

 beasts and birds, our plants and flowers, are for the most 

 part of purely Teutonic origin. Even as the rude and 

 hard-headed Anglo-Saxon has driven the gentle, poetical, 



