BIO-GEOLOGY. 57 
come hither? Which is the oldest? Will any one tell me whether the 
Heath flora of the moors or the Thymy flora of the chalk downs were the 
earlier inhabitants of these isles ? —questions to which I cannot get any an- 
swer, and which caunot be answered without first a very careful study of the 
range of each species of plant on the continent of Europe, nor, again, with- 
the flora of our moorlands is as yet to me an utter puzzle e b- 
mos ree species, enormously ancient forms which have survived the 
s, th 
age of ice; but did they crawl downward hither from them rtheru moun- 
i Pyrenees? You have the beautiful bog 
Asphodel again, an enormously ancient form ; for it is, strange to say, 
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common to North America and to Northern Europe, but does not enter 
north, and points (as do many species of plants and auimals) to the time 
when North Europe and N joi 
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New Forest two plants which afe members of the South Europe, or pro- 
rly the Atlantic flora, and which must have come from the south and 
south-east, and whieh are found iu no other spots in these islands. 
mean the lovely Gladiolus, which grows abundantly under the Ferns 
near Lyndhurst, certainly wild, but it does not approach us nearer than 
the Loire and the Rhine; and that delicate Orchid, the Spiranthes esti- 
