THE ORIENTAL MIGRATION. 271 



There is a corresponding flora with a range exactly 

 similar to that of some of the animals quoted. Thus 

 the Balkan Rhododendron (Rhododendron ponticmri) 

 is again met with in the western Mediterranean 

 region in Southern Spain. The Cedar occurs in 

 local varieties in the Himalayan Mountains, in the 

 Lebanon, and the Atlas Mountains. Both of these 

 are instances of discontinuous distribution, a proof of 

 their antiquity; but a large number of plants have a 

 continuous range between Asia Minor and Spain. 



On looking through these few instances of what have 

 been called Oriental migrants, one cannot help being 

 struck by the fact that the species after their entry 

 into Europe evidently did not all follow the same path 

 during their westward advance. We have seen that 

 a good many seem to have travelled either due west 

 or north-west on entering our continent from Asia 

 Minor. They may now perhaps be found in Greece, 

 Southern Italy, Algiers, and Spain, also probably on 

 some of the intervening islands in the Greek Archipe- 

 lago, in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, or they may have 

 travelled north-east and occur in the Alps. This distri- 

 bution indicates undoubtedly, as I have already set forth 

 in another memoir (c, p. 459), that land extended from 

 Asia Minor across Greece to Southern Italy, that the 

 latter again was disconnected with Central Italy, but 

 united with Sicily, Sardinia, and Tunis, and that the 

 Straits of Gibraltar did not exist at the time when 

 these species migrated westward. Some species 

 are only to be found as far west as Southern Italy, 



