1846.] MURCHISON ox THE SCANDINAVIAN DRIFT. 381 



blocks from the Scandinavian chain during the post-pliocene or 

 glacial period, when the highest points only of the British Isles are 

 supposed to have been above the waters. 



Coupling these inductions of eminent naturalists with the geolo- 

 gical phaenomena exhibited around the British coasts, and even at 

 great distances in the interior of our islands, where shells of the 

 post-pliocene or glacial period are found at considerable heights, 

 we must admit, that here, as in Scandinavia, some of the greatest 

 modifications of the physical outlines of all these countries, and the 

 most powerful changes in the relations of land to water which the 

 chronicles of the earth can furnish, have taken place in those last 

 great geological operations which apparently link on our own pe- 

 riod to a former condition of things. What grander movements of 

 elevation and depression can, for instance, be appealed to, than those 

 by which European Russia and Northern Germany (which were 

 unquestionably submarine when the erratics were distributed) were 

 raised up into massive continents to be tenanted by quadrupeds, 

 most of which have now passed away ? or when Scania was raised 

 into land and peopled by great mammalia common to it and to the 

 adjacent continent, whilst vast tracts to the north of it were still be- 

 neath the sea, or uninhabitable from other causes? Yet, since the 

 period when such animals roamed from Germany into Scania, the 

 deep fissures of the Sound and the adjacent Baltic have been scooped 

 out; whilst, according to Danish legends, supported indeed (accord- 

 ing to Professor Forchhammer) by much geological evidence, vast 

 tracts of land were simultaneously submerged along the western 

 coasts of Denmark. Coming then to our own homes, we there find, 

 from a combination of zoological and botanical with geological evi- 

 dence, that although, in the most recent of former epochs, the British 

 Islands were beneath the sea, they must, in common with the great 

 masses of the continent above alluded to, have been subsequently 

 raised into dry land, and must have continued united during a pe- 

 riod of sufficient length to allow numerous genera and species of 

 plants and animals to extend themselves from their original centres 

 of creation to our "Ultima Thule"; and finally, that after this 

 comparatively recent continental ditfusion, the lands have been 

 severed and isolated by the formation of those channels which now 

 constitute the German Ocean, the Straits of Dover, and tiie Irish 

 Sea. 



Truly, therefore, may geologists be allowed to draw largely upon 

 time in calculating their periods from the present day to the dawn 

 of the protozoic age, when they see that the last great superficial 

 changes — changes as it were of yesterday, when viewed as a jiart of 

 the whole terrestrial cycle — have occurred since the creation of many 

 species of beings whose descendants are among our associates. 



E. Forbes's paper is entitled, " On the Connexion hotwecn the Distribution of the 

 existing Fanna and Flora of the British Islands, and the Geological Changes uhieh 

 have affected tbeir area especially (hiring tbe epoch of the Northern Drift;" and 

 the subject was iirst presented to notice at the Meeting of the Uritish Association 

 held in Cambridge in 1845. 



VOL. 11. — PART I. '2 c 



