138 Elgee: The Driftless Area of North-East Yorkshire 
in the south of England, and in sheltered places, throughout 
the Ice Age. With the retreat of the ice, the fauna and flora 
again spread into their former haunts, probably with the addition 
of further species from the Continent. But the south of the 
country need not have been the only place where the pre-glacial 
fauna and flora survived. It seems quite possible that many of 
its members escaped destruction on the extensive driftless area 
of north-east Yorkshire. The great dales south of the moor- 
land anticlinal would afford ample shelter for numbers of 
animals and plants, whilst even the higher moors may not have 
been devoid of vegetation. Let us glance at some of the likely 
inhabitants of the region during the Ice Age. 
The Flora.—When we consider the Arctic range of many 
of the moorland plants and the rigorous climates to which they 
are exposed, I think we need have little hesitation in concluding 
that they probably lived on the driftless area throughout the 
Glacial Period. Among them we may mention the Cotton 
Grass, Bilberry, Crowberry, Heather, Bracken, Birch, Sallow, 
the Lesser Twayblade, Potentilla, Zrzentalis europaea, and the 
famous northern species the May Lily, the Dwarf Cornel, Carex 
pauctfiora, etc. In other words, the moors during the Ice Age 
must have been much the same as they are to-day so far as 
vegetation is concerned. It, however, necessarily follows that 
the moors must be of pre-glacial origin, though some of them 
are certainly of post-glacial age. Among these latter may be 
mentioned Eston Moor, the most northerly of all the Yorkshire 
heather-clad areas. As pointed out in my paper in this journal 
for August, 1906, p. 269, the whole of the Eston outlier was 
overridden by the Cheviot Glacier ; consequently, its moors are 
of post-glacial age. The drift here is very thin, and the hard 
sandstone crops out at the surface, forming the usual poor 
moorland soil. Some of the moors of the North Cleveland 
watershed are also of post-glacial origin, viz., Girrick, Wapley, 
and Easington Moors, which were heavily glaciated. It would 
seem as though the plants of the driftless area spread on to the 
lands deserted by the ice, and possibly in some cases across the 
lowlands of Cleveland. Round about Seamer, near Stokesley, 
Marton, etc., there are many place-names indicating that moors 
existed on the Cleveland plain since the period of the Scandi- 
navian invasion of the district. This view receives confirmation 
when we learn that the superficial deposits at the above-named 
localities are chiefly of glacial sand and gravel, and Graebner 
has pointed out how heather moors develop on bare sand, fer se 
Naturalist, 
