land and England formed portions of the European continent, yet 

 exist here. There has been no destruction of a great flora by a 

 glacial climate : our flora is just as it ever was. 



"At a hasty glance, it appears wonderful that such a compara- 

 tively great and level extent of surface could exist as that which 

 we have supposed to have extended from Ireland to the North- 

 West of Spain, and from England to the continent ; yet the pre- 

 sent plains of central Russia, and the great Sahara, are three times 

 as extensive as it. Moreover, this plain was by no means a lofty 

 one : a hundred feet, or so, may have made up its maximum eleva- 

 tion above the sea ; and if we now find the boulder clay at far 

 higher elevations, I think we may account for its presence there 

 by subsequent movements of upheaval of the land during the period 

 of its destruction. That the geological period antecedent to the 

 present one was, in this country, glacial is true ; but I maintain 

 that this glacial period ceased before the plants and animals who 

 migrated, or were carried from their normal centres of creation on 

 the continent, were cut off by the sea, as we have seen them to be. 



" The JPinguicula grows on the glacialised surface of the old 

 lied Sandstone in the Counties Cork and Kerry, yet its present 

 habitat is the Pyrenees, at the North-West of Spain. The glacia- 

 tion of Ireland would have swept this beautiful little plant com- 

 pletely from off the surface, and Edward Forbes's magnificent 

 theory of the distribution of plants and animals could never have 

 been propounded. 



" I think that two great events have been mixed together in 

 the paper I have criticised ; and it is well that they should be 

 separated, and clear ideas formed on their relative periods of exist- 

 ence, and on the effects they have produced on our present flora 

 and fauna. 



" Geo. V. Du Noyer. 



"Antrim, 27th December, 1868. 

 " Wm. Gray, Esq." 



Mr. Steavart made a brief reply, saying that, while feeling 

 much obliged to the late Mr. Du Noyer for compelling him to ie- 



