Sir H. JECowovth — The Mammoth Age and the Glaciers. 165 



we find in the Baltic lands marine shells associated with land debris, 

 as we, in fact, do also in England whei'e Molluscs from salt-water 

 and Molluscs from fresh-water and pieces of wood, and teeth of 

 animals occur in the same beds, being the debris of a widespread 

 ruinous flood. It seems to me that all the evidence we have points 

 to this conclusion, which I have long ago urged. The theory of the 

 survival of the pre-Glacial Fauna and Flora is a notion that does not 

 date from j'esterday only. It is likely, I think, to grow. I have 

 already shown in your pages what strong grounds there are for 

 believing that the fauna and flora of Greenland, Spitzbergen, and 

 other lands are not a re-importation after they had been depopulated 

 by the Glacial monster, but a survival from pre-Glacial times. 



Coming down to our own latitudes I never could understand how 

 the Lusitanian forms in the flora of the South-West of England and 

 the South of Ireland could be explained b}' any other theory. 



The view had already been maintained by Edward Forbes. He 

 considered that the oldest vegetation in the British Isles is that of 

 the mountains of the West of Ireland, which, though an Alpine flora, 

 is Southern in character, and quite distinct, as a system, from that 

 of the Scotch and Welsh Hills. Its very Southern character, its 

 limitation, and its extreme isolation, are evidence, he says, of its 

 antiquity, pointing to a period when a great mountain-barrier 

 extended across the mouth of the Bay of Biscay, from Spain to 

 Ireland, which he attributes, hypothetically, to Miocene times. 

 Another flora, confined to the South-west of England and uniting 

 that promontory, is similar to that of the Channel Islands and the 

 opposite coast of France. The existence of this flora depended upon 

 the existence of a barrier, the traces of which still remain, from the 

 West of France to the South-west of Britain. Here, again, we must 

 travel beyond the Glacial period to explain the facts. Forbes 

 argues further that the endemic animals, especially the terrestrial 

 Molluscs, necessitate the same conclusion (Brit. Ass. Rep. for 1845, 

 pp. 67 and 68). 



Mr. Bulman has recently examined the question in Natural 

 Science, and I will quote some of his conclusions. 



He mentions the absence from England of fifty species of Mammals 

 occurring on the Continent as a notable fact in this behalf, and 

 pointing to our fauna being that which survived from Glacial times. 

 If there had been a subsequent bridge it is hard to explain this 

 absence, for, as he says, the supposition that they had not time will 

 not pass muster; and so with the reptiles. Turning to the plants, 

 he says that those which must have crossed the plain, on the 

 hypothesis of a re-stocking from the Continent after the Glacial 

 epoch, include, apparently, some of the most slowly-spreading 

 forms. In regard to the Southern plants in Ireland, he says: "In 

 the absence of a direct land-connection between Ireland and the 

 North of Spain since glaciation, for which there is no independent 

 evidence, it is difficult to understand how they can have got there ; " 

 and he goes on to argue " that a more reasonable explanation is to 

 suppose that they were previously widely dispersed over Britain 



