J- an. i 5, 1885] 



NA TURE 



.,.-, of Aulacomya magellanica, of Patella magellanica, frag- 

 ments of Otaria jubata, and a few cither mammals, but no 



human remains, no traces of pottery, no bones split for the ex- 

 traction of the marrow, no arms or manufactured objects 

 beyond a few rude spear- or arrow-heads. All this offers 

 the most striking analogy to the more recent and modern refuse 

 heaps now being formed, and seems to point at a continuity of 

 population since early quaternary times. The absence of human 

 remains or split bones might even imply that the primitive in- 

 habitants, like their present descendants, were at no period 

 addicted to anthropophagy. In other respects the latter occupy 

 an extremely low social position. They practise no a ts beyond 

 the manufacture of frail bark canoes, unchanged since the time 

 of Drake's visit, shell knives, bows, darts, and harpoons. The 

 wigwams are branches stuck in the ground and gathered to a 

 point above, or else a mere guanaco skin (among the Onas) sus- 

 pended from a tree to windward. Their food is mainly fish, 

 crustaceans, wild berries, mushrooms, cetaceans, greedily de- 

 voured in a highly putrescent state. They believe in gho.ts and 

 demons, but have no idea of a god, or of any religious worship ; 

 are guided rather by instincts than by reason ; lack even the 

 maternal sentiment, at least after the period of weaning ; show no 

 feeling of real affection for friends or kindred, the only deve- 

 loped sentiment being that of pure selfishness. Their stupidity is 

 such that they are unable to count beyond three, after which 

 everything is vtiru — much, many. Yet, in the face of all this 

 the writer was assured by the English missionaries now evangel- 

 ising these primitive or debased peoples, that the language of 

 the Yahgans, into which they have translated the Gospel of St. 

 Luke, contains no less than 30,000 words, "a wealth contrast- 

 ing strangely with their present low state of culture, and natu- 

 rally suggesting the hypothesis of an origin very different and 

 far superior to the present." But, assuming a former higher 

 state, the difficulty is to understand how such a rich linguistic 

 inheritance could have been preserved for countless generations 

 in their present degraded condition, and amid the adverse sur- 

 roundings of their present habitat. On this subject clearly mare 

 light is demanded. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE XORTH 

 AMERICAS FLORAE 

 II. 

 ""THIS contrast is susceptible of explanation. I have ventured to 

 ■*■ regard the two antipodal floras thus compared as the favoured 

 heirs of the ante-Glacial high northern flora, or rather as the 

 heirs who have retained most of their inheritance. For, inas- 

 much as the present Arctic flora is essentially the same round 

 the world, and the Tertiary fossil plants entombed in the strata 

 beneath are also largely identical in all the longitudes, we may 

 well infer that the ancestors of the present northern temperate 

 plants were as widely distributed throughout their northern 

 home. In their enforced migration southward, geographical 

 configuration and climatic differences would begin to operate 

 Perhaps the way into Europe was less open than into the lower 

 latitudes of America and Eastern Asia, although there is reason 

 to think that Greenland was joined to Scandinavia. How- 

 ever that be. we know that Europe was fairly well furnished 

 with many tble types that are now absent, possibly 



with most of them. Those that have been recognised are 

 mainly trees and shrubs, which somehow take most readily to 

 fossilisation, but the herbaceous vegetation probably accom- 

 panied the arboreal. At any rate, Europe then possessed 

 Torreyas and Gingkos, Taxodium and Glyptostrobus, Liboced- 

 rus, Pines of our five-leaved type, as well as the analogues of 

 other American forms, several species of Juglans answering to 

 the American fornix, and the now peculiarly America-; genus 

 Carya, Oaks of the American types, Myricas of the two 

 American types, one or two Planer-trees, species of Populus 

 answering to our Cotton-woods and our Balsam-poplar, a Sas- 

 safras, r.nd the analogues of our Persea and benzoin, a Catalpa, 

 Magnolias, and a Liriodendron, Maples answering to ours, an 1 

 also a Negundo, and such peculiarly American Leguminous 

 I icust, Honey Locust, and Gymnocladus. To 

 understand how Europe came to lose these elements of her flora, 

 and Atlantic North America to retain them, we must recall the 



1 An Add] ni its of the British Association for the Advance- 



ment of Science ; real at Montreal to the Biological Section, August 29, 

 Prof Asa Gray. Continued from p. 235. 



poverty of Europe in native forest trees, to which I have already 

 alluded. A few years ago, in an article on this subject, I drew 

 up a sketch of the relative richness of Europe, Atlantic X. rth 

 America, Pacific North America, and the eastern side of tem- 

 perate {Asia in genera and species of forest trees (Am. Journ. 

 Set. iii. vi. 85). In that sketch, as I am now convinced, the 

 European forest elements were somewhat under-rated. I 

 allowed only 33 genera and 85 species, while to our Atlantic 

 American forest were assigned 66 genera and 155 species. I 

 find from Nyman's Conspectus that there are trees on the 

 southern and eastern borders of Europe which I had omitted, 

 that there are good species which I had reckoned as synonyms, 

 and some that may rise to arboreal height which I had counted 

 as shrubs. But on the other hand and for the present purpose it 

 may be rejoined that the list contained several trees, of as many 

 genera, which were probably carried from Asia into Europe by 

 the hand of man. On Nyman's auttnrity I may put into this 

 category Cercis Silijuas/rum, Ceratonia Siliqua, Duspyros- 

 loins, Slyrax officinalis, the Olive, and even the Walnut, the 

 Chestnut, and the Cypress. However this may be, it seems 

 clear that the native forest flora of Europe is exceptionally poor,, 

 and that it has lost many species and types which once belonged 

 to it. We must suppose that the herbaceous flora has suffered 

 in the same way. I have endeavoured to show how this has 

 naturally come about. I cannot state it more concisely than in 

 the terms which I used six years ago. 



"I conceive that three things have conspired to this loss of 

 American, or as we might say, of normal types sustained by 

 Europe. First, Europe, extending but little south of lat. 40°, 

 is all within the limits of severe glacial action. Second, it- 

 mountains trend east and west, from the Pyrenees to the 

 Carpathians and the Caucasus beyond ; they had glaciers of 

 their own, which must have be^un their work and poured down 

 the northward flanks while the plains were still covered with 

 forest on the retreat from the great ice forces coming from the 

 north. Attacked both on front and rear, much of the forest 

 must have perished then and there. 



"Third, across the line of retreat of whatever trees may have 

 flanked the mountain ranges, or were stationed south of them, 

 stretched the Mediterranean, an impassable barrier. . . . Escape 

 by the east, and rehabilitation from that quarter until a very 

 late period, was apparently prevented by the prolongation of the 

 Mediterranean to the Caspian, and probably thence to the 

 Siberian Ocean. If we accept the supposition of Nordenskjold 

 that, anterior to the Glacial period, Europe was ' bounded on the 

 south by an ocean extending from the Atlantic over the present 

 deserts of Sahara and Central Asia to the Pacific,' all chance of 

 these American types having escaped from and re-entered Europe 

 from the south and east seems excluded. Europe may thus be 

 conceived to have been for a time somewhat in the condition in 

 which Greenland is now. . . . Greenland may be referred to as 

 a country which, having undergone extreme glaciation, bears the 

 marks of it in the extreme poverty of its flora, and in the 

 absence of the plants to which its southern portion, extending 

 six degrees below the Arctic circle, might be entitled. It ought 

 to have trees and it might support them. But since their destruc- 

 tion by glaciation no way has been open for their return. Europe 

 fared much better, hut has suffered in its degree in a similar way " 

 [American Journal 0/ S ience, I.e., p. 194). 



Turning to this country for a contrast, we find the continent 

 on the eastern side unbroken and open from the Arctic circle to 

 the tropic, and the mountains running north and south. The 

 vegetation when pressed on the north by on-coming refrigeration 

 had only to move its southern border southward to enjoy its 

 normal climate over a favourable region of great extent ; and, 

 upon the recession of glaciation to the present limit, or in the 

 oscillations which intervened, there was no physical impediment 

 to the adjustment. Then, too, the more southern latitude of this 

 country gave great advantage over Europe. The line of ter- 

 minal moraines, which marks the limit of glaciation, rarely passes 

 the parallel of 40° or 39°. Nor have any violent changes occurred 

 here, as they have on the Pacific side of the continent, within 

 the period under question. So, while Europe was suffering 

 hardship, the lines of our Atlantic American flora were cast in 

 pleasant places, and the goodly heritage remains essentially 

 unimpaired. 



The transverse direction and the massiveness of the mountains 

 of Europe, whiie they have in part determined the comparative 

 poverty of its forest vegetation, have preserved there a rich and 

 widely distributed Alpine flora. That of Atlantic North America. 



