The Romance of a Wayside Weed. 57 



they came there at all. ' Were they not always there ? ' 

 somebody may ask me. And the answer is, No, 

 undoubtedly not. You might as well explain the 

 presence of an English-speaking colony on Pitcairn 

 Island by the hypothesis that Englishmen were 

 originally created in two separate centres — Great 

 Britain and the South Pacific. Only some 80,000 

 years since — a mere single swing of the cosmical 

 pendulum — every inch of Great Britain and Ireland, 

 save only an insignificant southern fringe, was 

 wholly covered by the ice of the last glacial period. 

 We know the date with mathematical certainty, 

 because the astronomical conditions upon which 

 glacial periods have been shown almost beyond doubt 

 to depend, began 200,000 years ago, and ended 80,000 

 years ago. During the interval between those two 

 dates, the condition of each hemisphere alternated 

 between long cold periods and long hot periods, of 

 some 10,500 years each. During the last cold spell, 

 all England and Ireland were in the condition of 

 Greenland at the present day. The ice had planed 

 every living thing clean off the face of the country, and 

 we may still trace its scratches on the smooth granite 

 bosses of Wales and Scotland, or find its till and its 

 moraines on the plains and valleys of East Anglia 

 and Derbyshire. Consequently the ancestors of every 



