MOLLUSOA OP LOWER CANADA. 57 



summits of the new formed and still existing mountains. Few 

 botanists who have climbed the Scotch Highlands, will fail to recol- 

 lect the little isolated patches of Arctic plants on the highest 

 mountain summits, which never occur at a hss altitude than from 

 3000 to 3500 feet above the sea level. Well do I remember 

 standing one fine August morning on the apex of Ben Lawers, 

 the clouds at my feet obscuring everything below, the warm sun 

 shining in the deep blue sky above, and admiring the glorious hue 

 of the Alpine forget-me-not (Myosotis alpestris) the two rare 

 mountain Saxifrages, (S. nivalis and S. cernua,) and a whole array 

 of characteristic ferns, mosses, <fec. But I am digressing. After the 

 gradual re-upheavals subsequent to this state of things, it is be- 

 lieved that Ireland was connected with England, and England 

 with Germany, by vast plains, fragments of which still exist as 

 submarine elevations of the land on the west coast of Ireland, 

 charged with the familiar fossils of the period. Upon these lived 

 numerous animals, some of which, as the musk ox, red deer, and 

 horse, yet live. Others, again, as the Arctic elephant (Er.elephas 

 primigenius), the two-horned Rhinoceri (Rhinoceros tichorinus, 

 and R. leptorhinus), cave bear (Ursa spelasa), hyaena, etc., 

 though now extinct in Great Britain, have left behind their bones, 

 teeth etc., as post-pliocene fossils in the gravels and clays of our 

 English drifts. According to D'Archiac, the separation of the British 

 Islands from France took place after the deposition of the gravels of 

 the valley of the Somme, in which flint implements have been found. 

 And hence it has been inferred "That the primitive people, to 

 whom we attribute the hatchets and other worked flints of Amiens 

 and Abbeville, might have communicated with the existing country 

 of England by dry laud, inasmuch as the separation did not take 

 place until after the deposit of the rolled diluvial pebbles, from 

 among which the hatchets and other objects, have been collected.'' 

 The discovery of the fossil remains of an elephant in Sicily, near 

 Syracuse, and at Palermo, identical with the living African species 

 (vide Dr. Falconer,) renders it also probable that man lived in 

 Europe at a time when what is now the Mediterranean was a 

 mighty fresh water river. But to come nearer home. It has 

 been held by many of the most eminent geologists that the great 

 depression and subsequent gradual re-upheaval of the land during 

 the post-pliocene age, in Northern Europe and Asia, also took 

 place in temperate north America. Sir Charles Lyell, after care- 

 ful study of the drift fossils of the United States and Canada, 



