ScHARFF — On the Origin of the Euroj^ean Fauna. 475 



It seems to me that such a supposition is entirely unwarranted 

 from the known habits of the reindeer and its powers of endurance. 

 The distance which it would require to traverse between Spitsbergen 

 and the most northern point of the Scandinavian peninsula is at least 

 700 miles, though Bear Island, which is about 250 miles south of the 

 former, might form a resting place. To travel in search of food on 

 such exceedingly difficult ground as rough ice with crevasses for even 

 a couple of hundred miles would have been quite beyond its powers. 



There are in Ireland a few American species of plants, and also 

 some Invertebrates which in Europe only occur in the west. They 

 are altogether absent from Eastern Europe and from Asia. It seems 

 to me probable that these have migrated during later Tertiary times, 

 either from North America by means of the former land-connexion 

 which I have referred to, or from the Arctic regions to both Europe 

 and America, and thus form part of the Arctic migration. In Ireland 

 these so-called American species are almost altogether confined to the 

 northern and western counties. 



The first of these, a pretty white-flowering orchid {Spiranthes 

 romanzoviana), does not occur anywhere in Europe outside Ireland, 

 Until recently it had only been met with in a few isolated localities 

 on the west coast, but Mr. Praeger has since added another station in 

 the north of Ireland (Co. Armagh). The second is the narrow-leaved 

 SisyrincMum anceps which is found in boggy and heathy places in the 

 counties of Galway and Kerry. It has not been met with anywhere 

 else in Europe. The next two, viz. the slender Naiad and the jointed 

 Eriocaulon are freshwater plants, and have a somewhat wider range 

 than the others. The Naiad {Naias flexilis) is found in Connemara, in 

 the west of Scotland, and in a few isolated localities in Northern 



Feilden, and he is certainly in favour of a survival of part of the i)lants through 

 the Glacial Period, where they now live (29, p. 50). Mr. Geldart expressed 

 similar views in an interesting address, recently delivered to the Norfolk and 

 Norwich Naturalists' Society. 



The idea that everything within the Arctic Circle was covered hy snow and ice 

 during the Glacial Period can no longer be maintained. Some, indeed, hold that 

 the climate in those regions was then much milder than it is now. 



Col. Feilden remarks (30, p. 57) : " It is suggestive that all the Glacial deposits 

 which I have met with in Arctic and Polar lands, with the exception of terminal 

 moraines now fonuing above sea-level, in areas so widely separated as Smith's 

 Sound, Grinnell Land, Northern Greenland, Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemlya, and 

 Arctic Norway, should be glacio-marine beds. Throughout this broad expanse of 

 the Arctic regions I have come across no beds that could be satisfactorily assigned 

 to the direct action of land-ice." 



E.T.A. PEOC., SER. Ill , VOL. IV. 2 L 



