The Romance of a Wayside Weed. y^ 



sheltered belt beneath the mountain-ranges of Ireland 

 and Scotland as far northward as Bute and Arran, 

 where some (gw of its hardier representatives are 

 actually still preserved. Meanwhile, the eastern level 

 slope of what is now England, together with Holland 

 and the intervening land which then filled up the 

 basin of the German Ocean, must have had an inland 

 continental climate, exposed to the full rigour of the 

 north-east winds, and unmitigated by the warmth and 

 moisture now diffused over it by the sea and its 

 currents. In short, the condition of that great table- 

 land must have been much like the condition of 

 Central Russia at the present day, aggravated perhaps 

 by an extra elevation to some hundreds of feet above 

 its existing level. Here, then, the flora must have 

 been of the central European and Scandinavian type ; 

 while west of the great central range of England, the 

 trees and flowers must in the main have resembled 

 those which we now find among the nooks of the 

 Apennines and the Genoese Riviera. 



By-and-by, however, the earth's crust began to 

 sink in western Europe, as it is sinking now in Scania 

 and the bed of the southern Baltic. Slowly the 

 great Atlantic plain disappeared below the waters, 

 leaving only the mountain-tops and higher plateaus 



as islands above the sea-level. First the two lateral 

 6 



