The Romance of a Wayside Weed. 6^^ 



purple viper's-bugloss has been driven to the very 

 extremity of Britain at Penzance ; while the various 

 kinds of rock-cistus, the Steep Holme paeony, and the 

 Cheddar pink linger on each only in a single inac- 

 cessible spot in the south-western peninsula of England. 

 These are clear evidences that they form the last 

 stragglers of a vanquished flora, not the vigorous 

 vanguard of a victorious and aggressive race. 



And now we are in a position fairly to settle the 

 problem where the hairy spurge and its fellows have 

 come from, and how they got here. People who 

 recognise the fact that Britain was once joined to the 

 Continent are too apt to fancy that it was joined only 

 by a sort of narrow bridge between Dover and Calais. 

 The aspect of the shore on either side, the high bluffs 

 of Shakespeare's Cliff and Cap Grisnez, the geological 

 continuity between the chalk and the other formations 

 on the two coasts, all forcibly suggest that France 

 and England must once have been joined there — 

 as, indeed, they undoubtedly were. But we are all 

 inclined mentally to minimise the amount of connec- 

 tion ; we stick in an isthmus just sufficient to carry 

 the South-Eastern Railway across to Boulogne, and 

 then we are fully satisfied with our new geography. 

 In reality, however, the old land connection was some- 

 thing far more complete and universal than that. 



