PllOCEEDINGS 



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THE llOYAL lEISPI ACADEMY 



PAPERS READ BEFORE THE ACADEMY 



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ON THE EVIDENCES OF A FOEMEK LAND-BEIDGE BETWEEN 

 NOETHEEN EUEOPE AND NOETH AMEEICA. 



By E. F. SCHAEFF, Ph.D., M.E.I.A. 



Read November 8. Ordered for Publication Novembeu 10. Published November 13, 1909. 



When I enunciated the theory some years ago that north-western Europe 

 and north-eastern America had been connected with one another by hxnd 

 within comparatively recent geological times, my views were ad\'eisely 

 criticized by a reviewer in Natural Science.^ What particularly gave 

 rise to these criticisms was my statement that the reindeer had probably 

 utilized this land-connexion in gaining access to Europe from its supposed 

 American centre of dispersion. My reviewer urged that he failed to perceive 

 any evidence for a land-connexion between North America and Europe by 

 way of Greenland at the time when the reindeer flourished in the British 

 Islands — that is to say, during or just previous to the human peiiod. 



Another reviewer — Dr. L. Stejneger — disapproved of my suggested laud- 

 bridge between northern Norway and America by way of Spitsbergen 

 and Greenland, while advocating at least a discontinuous one further south.' 

 He thought that Dr. Nansen's oceanographic results in the Polar basin 

 militated against my views. Dr. Nansen's detailed treatise, since published, 

 shows that in this he was mistaken. Further studies, nevertheless, have led 

 me to the conviction that a second and more southerly land-connexion, 



' Review of Schiirff's " European Fauna," Natural Science, vol. xv., p. 358. 

 - Stejneger, L., Sclinrtfs " History of the European Fauna," p. 107. 



R. I. A. PKOC, VOL. XXVIU., SECT. B. [B] 



