5*8 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



dence it brought of a flora in 81°-82° N"., containing plants of a 

 much less rigorous climate and latitude, one of which (Andrasace 

 septentrionalis) is found nowhere within 10° of the latitude it 

 there attains. Had it been found fossil only, it woidd have been 

 regarded as unquestionable evidence of a change of climate. 

 My friend, the late Dr. Thos. Thomson, had similar views to 

 yours as to a warmer postglacial epoch, though probably, like my 

 own, they were never formulated." 



Intimately connected with the question of postglacial cli- 

 mate is that of the origin of the floras of the Fseroe Islands, 

 Iceland, and Greenland. The list of Faeroe plants given by 

 Trevelyan, 1 and Dr. Lauder Lindsay's catalogue of the Icelandic 

 flora, 2 show that the Germanic type is strongly represented in 

 those regions. By what means and at what time did these 

 islands receive their vegetation ? Edward Forbes has not hesi- 

 tated to maintain that the presence of the Germanic types 

 proves that there must have been a land-connection with the 

 British area to have permitted the immigration of the plants in 

 question. There is, indeed, no other way of accounting for 

 their presence. 3 Again, Sir Joseph Hooker has shown that the 

 flora of Greenland is essentially Scandinavian or North-west 

 European in character, hardly any of the peculiar plants of the 

 American Arctic sea -coast and polar islands crossing Baffin 

 Bay and Davis Straits. And he accounts for the fact of its 

 Scandinavian character by inferring " that at a period previous 

 to the Glacial, a flora common to Scandinavia and Greenland 

 was spread over the American polar area; and that on the 



1 Edin. New. Phil. Journ., 1835. 2 Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin., 1860, p. 114. 



Of course it is not denied that there are many other ways and means by 

 which plants have become dispersed. Winds and ocean-currents have done their 

 part, and doubtless birds have performed theirs. But the regions referred to 

 could hardly have received their flora in this way. The flora of Greenland is 

 much more closely connected with that of Scandinavia than with the flora of the 

 adjacent American coast. But if the plants had been carried by wind, sea, or 

 birds, the reverse ought to have been the case. So also with the floras of Iceland 

 and the Faeroes ; had they been carried in a haphazard way across the sea, they 

 would not have presented such a close analogy with the flora of North-west 

 Europe. The plants of the Faroe Islands and Iceland are just such as ought to 

 occur if continuous, or nearly continuous, land had permitted their immigration. 



