STEJ NEGER] ANIMALS AND PLANTS OF NORWAY 499 
“Down to postglacial times Scotland, and what are now its out- 
lying islands remained united with Scandinavia. I need not remind 
you how, during the glacial period, they were the scene of a similar 
succession of events; while from their then far more elevated moun- 
tain-summits streams of glacier-ice flowed down and relieved the 
mantle of snow which enveloped them. 
“But at a very recent geological period, and indeed since the 
appearance of man in this part of our globe, the separation of the 
two areas, so long united, was brought about. In the district now 
constituting the North Sea, which separates the two countries, great 
faults, originating in the Tertiary epoch, appear to have let down 
wide tracts of the softer secondary strata among the harder crystal- 
line rock-masses. The numerous changes of level, of which we find 
such abundant evidence around the shores of this sea, facilitated the 
wearing away of the whole of the softer secondary deposits, except 
the slight fringes that remain along the shores of Sutherland, Ross 
and Cromarty, on the one hand, and the isolated patches forming 
Scania, Jutland, and the surrounding islands on the other. Little 
could the Vikings, as they sailed over this shallow sea, have imagined 
that their predecessors in these regions were able to roam on foot 
from Norroway to Suderey!” 
These quotations might be added to ad libitum and, as hinted at 
in my introductory remarks, I might make my task easy by simply 
showing that eminent geologists have advocated the existence of a 
Scoto-Norwegian land bridge in postglacial times, that is, after the 
disappearance of the neoglacial ice sheet. If it were generally 
accepted, if it could be termed “an established geological fact” that 
the distribution of land and water in northern Europe “ after the 
epoch of the last great Baltic glacier’ was as represented in Geikie’s 
map (Great Ice Age, 3 ed., 1894, pl. x11) there would probably be 
very little opposition to my theory of the Scotch origin of the char- 
acteristic biota of west Norway. Unfortunately, a postglacial con- 
nection meets with disapproval of geologists equally distinguished. 
It is the latter which I must try to convince that the animals and 
plants discussed here may have come from the west, or at least 
I must try to make my case so plausible that they are willing to 
consider the question in the light of the facts and theories brought 
together in this paper. 
In glancing over the Norwegian geological literature relating to 
these questions one is struck by the great attention given to the 
various glacial submersions and the corresponding deficiency with 
