32 



the Chalk cliffs of Dover and the North-West of France, about 

 Dieppe. 



"On this level plain the existence of which was due to the 

 action of ice, and which was formed during an Arctic period The 

 Cave Bear, the Lion, the Hippopotamus, the Elephant, the Hyena, 

 the Mammoth, the Beaver, and the other extinct animals, whose 

 remains are now found in the caves of Derbyshire, and the Ele- 

 phant, whose bones have been found in the limestone cave at Dun- 

 garven, roamed, or migrated, as far as their requirements or the 

 climate enabled or led them. 



" So it was with the Plants ; the seed of the Pinguicula was 

 transported from the Western Pyrenees as far North as the 

 Southern portion of what is now Ireland, and then it rested, as 

 the climate further North was unsuited to its growth. 



" The forces of denudation, as exerted by the sea, in the mean- 

 time, reached their culminating point, and Ireland became an 

 island, separated each year farther and farther from the Lusitanian 

 centre of creation, on the Iberian Peninsula. And here I would 

 remark that I believe the term Hibernian, as applied to certain 

 plants whose most luxuriant habitat is the North of Spain — like 

 the Pinguicula — is not correct. It should bo Lusitanian, as in 

 that ancient province of Spain these plants had their centres of 

 creation, and from which they radiated Northwards. These plants 

 are not Hibernian, but Spanish, or Iberian, in the sense propounded 

 by Edward Forbes. 



" We have no reason to conclude, therefore, that the climate 

 of this Lusitanian fauna and flora was glacial ; on the contrary, 

 these plants and animals lived, like our present inhabitants, on a 

 glacial-formed surface, but not under a glacial climate. To suppose 

 the contrary would be assuming a state of things not proved, but 

 rather disproved, by the facts that the sea which separated Ireland 

 and England from the Continent of Europe, cut through a glacial- 

 formed deposit, and, therefore, probably not under the influence of 

 a glacial climate. In fact, the sea is doing the same thing this 

 present moment — carrying away our Boulder Clay from our coast 

 line, and eating farther and farther into our basement rocks. The 

 only species of plants which could exist in our climate, when Ire- 



