BRITISH AND FOREIGN 125 



tion on our principal canals. The Ganges and the Missis- 

 sippi have lon^ since flooded the tawny Tliamos, ag 

 Juvenal's cynical friend declared the Syrian Orontcs had 

 flooded the Tiher. And what has thus hjen going on 

 slowly within the memory of the last few generations has 

 been going on constantly from tinie immemorial, and 

 peopling Britain in all its parts with its now existing fauna 

 and flora. 



But if all the plants and animals in our islands are 

 thus ultimately imported, the question naturally arises, 

 What was there in Great Britain and Ireland before any of 

 their present inhabitants came to inherit them ? The 

 answer is, succinctly, Nothing. Or if this be a little too 

 extreme, then let us imitate the modesty of Mr. Gilbert's 

 hero and modify the statement into Hardly anything. In 

 England, as in Northern Europe generally, modern history 

 begins, not with the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but with 

 the passing away of the Glacial Epoch. During that great 

 age of universal ice our Britain, from end to end, was 

 covered at various times by sea and by glaciers ; it re- 

 sembled on the whole the cheerful aspect of Spitzbergen 

 or Nova Zembla at the present day. A few reindeer 

 wandered now and then over its frozen shores ; a scanty 

 vegetation of the correlative roiTidjcr-moss grew with 

 difficulty under the sheets and drifts of endless snow ; a 

 stray walrus or an occasional seal basked in the chilly 

 sunshine on the ice-bound coast. But during the greatest 

 extension of the North-European ice-sheet it is probable 

 that life in London was completely extinct ; the metropoli- 

 tan area did not even vegetate. Snow and snow and snow 

 and snow was then the short sum-total of British scenery. 

 Murray's Guides were rendered quite unnecessary, and 

 penny ices were a drug in the market. England was given 

 up to one unchanging universal winter. 



