72 Flowers and their Pedigrees. 



pcct that the submcrfTcncc of this western land was a 

 work of time, and that no particular date can be 

 assigned to it as a whole. 



Now, when a continuous belt of lowland stretched 

 round from Spain to Ireland and the Shetlands, we 

 can easily understand that the warm type of south 

 European plants would run northward along its 

 western shore as far as the climatic conditions per- 

 mitted. But the climate on all the west coast of 

 northern Europe is exceptionally mild and moist, 

 through the agency of the Gulf Stream and the warm 

 westerly breezes which blow across it. Hence it is 

 not surprising that the Mediterranean heath, the 

 strawberry tree, the paeony, the hairy spurge, and all 

 the other southern plants which I have before 

 scheduled, should have ranged all along the Atlantic 

 shore of Europe, past the Pyrenees and the Asturias, 

 up the bend a hundred and fifty miles west of the 

 Land's End, and so onward to Kerry and Connemara. 

 Dr. James Geikic has recently shown good reasons 

 for believing that the last glacial epoch was imme- 

 diately succeeded by a short spell — say a thousand 

 years or so — of very sunny and genial conditions in 

 northern Europe ; and while these favourable con- 

 ditions lasted we can readily understand that the 

 southern flora may even have extended along the 



