1 88 Flowers and their Pedigrees, 



current of the Gulf Stream, it acquired an unusually 

 high and equable temperature for a district situated so 

 far to the north and rising into so many chains of low 

 mountains. But not all the plants and animals which 

 inhabit the continent had had time to reach England, 

 which has a comparatively poor fauna and flora ; while 

 still more failed to get to Ireland before the separation ; 

 and so, the Irish flora contains a larger proportion of 

 Spanish and Portuguese types, while the mass of the 

 English flora, especially in the eastern half of the 

 island, is essentially Germanic. 



Even after this change to more genial conditions, 

 however, many of the Arctic plants, though now 

 separated by wide stretches of sea or land from their 

 nearest relatives elsewhere, managed to keep up a 

 vigorous existence in the Scotch Highlands, the Welsh 

 hills, and the greater summits of the Lake district. 

 Some of them still cover vast tracts of country in the 

 north ; as, for example, the little green sibbaldia, a 

 tufted Arctic trailer, whose herbage forms a chief 

 element of the greensward in many parts of the 

 Highlands ; or the pretty eight-petalled dryas, which 

 stars with its sweet white blossoms the limestone 

 rocks of northern England and the Ulster hills. 

 Among the more common of these isolated old glacial 

 flowers in Britain are the Alpine meadow-rue, the 



