76 F/o7ucTS and their Pedig7^ees. 



Pyrenees ; and it has left the high and bleak granite 

 moorland of Brittany jutting out alone into the 

 western sea. But Brittany looks northward, and is 

 open only to the chilliest winds ; while its fair share 

 of the Gulf Stream is diverted by currents due to the 

 lay of the land in Cornwall. Moreover, the great 

 bight of Biscay distracts and upsets the old run of 

 the water, so that the whole shore of France from the 

 Garonne northward is really colder and less equable 

 in temperature than Cornwall and Kerry, or even 

 than the average of our own western and southern 

 coast. The Vendee is a chilly marshland ; Bretagne 

 Bretonannte is a high and wind-swept heath. On 

 the other hand, our extreme south-western peninsulas 

 and islands are bathed on every side by the v/arm 

 water of the Gulf Stream, and so possess an unusually 

 mild, damp, and equable climate. Every one has 

 heard of the semi-tropical vegetation of oalms and 

 aloes which flourishes in the open air at Tresco Abbey 

 in the Scilly Isles. Here, then, we have exactly the 

 conditions under which the southern plants, though 

 beaten back to the very base of the hills, might still 

 manage to keep up a precarious existence in a few 

 scattered and sheltered nooks. And that is exactly 

 what they have done. Separated from all the rest of 

 their kind, exposed to occasional hard winters or 



