72 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



Lundy is a small boss of granite with a little of the 

 red Devonian rock in patches on its surface, rising 

 somewhat abruptly from the bed of the Bristol Channel, 

 only twelve miles from the steep promontory of Hart- 

 land Point. It is not more than three miles long, and it 

 is little visited except by a few stray travellers from 

 Clovelly or Ilfracombe, who go over out of curiosity, in 

 order to say they have been to a place which hardly 

 anybody else has been to before. But from the point 

 of view of the geologist and naturalist Lundy and the 

 Holms are full of interest. For if, as seems probable, 

 the Bristol Channel was at no very remote period a 

 broad and open plain, like that of the Gironde, through 

 which the Severn made its way into the Atlantic some- 

 where off the south coast of Ireland, then these three 

 petty islands are solitary remains of the submerged 

 lands little hills which have survived the general sub- 

 sidence, as Glastonbury Tor might survive if the water 

 were to break over the Somersetshire marshes, or as 

 Primrose Hill might survive if the valley of the Thames 

 were to sink some fifty feet below the sea. 



We know that the warmth and the sea air have kept 

 a great many south European plants and animals alive 

 in the south-western peninsulas of England and Ireland 

 long after they have been killed out in the colder regions 

 of the north and east ; and in these little islets of the 

 south-west coast the insular conditions of heat, equable 

 temperature, and moisture prevail in the highest degree. 

 Everybody has heard of the sub-tropical vegetation of 

 palms and aloes, which flourishes in the open air at 

 Tresco Abbey, in the Scilly Isles ; and all the insular or 

 peninsular portions of the shore exposed to the full flow 



