ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Ivii 



when we cross the German Ocean. On the other hand, the peculi- 

 arities of the Irish and Scottish faunas and floras depend either on 

 the presence of animals and plants which are not of the Germanic 

 type, or on the absence of English species, which are." There are 

 some species of plants which seem to indicate a derivation from a 

 more northern point in the Germanic region, than that from whence 

 the main parts of the assemblage came. — In describing these five 

 floras, of which the above is a general outline, the author enumerates 

 an extensive series of instances of species in support of his views. 



It thus appears, that the chief part, at least, of the British flora has 

 migrated hither from various regions of the continent of Europe 

 nearest to our shores, extending from Scandinavia to Spain .; in other 

 words, that, long after the organisms now constituting the living 

 flora and fauna of these islands were called into existence, Great 

 Britain and Ireland were a part of the continent of Europe. The 

 identity of structure of France and England at the Straits of Dover, 

 and for a considerable distance westward, has long been admitted 

 by geologists to be a proof of the former continuity of the two 

 countries, and the remarkable similarity in the structure of the land 

 on both sides of the more western parts of the English Channel leads 

 to a similar conclusion, viz. that France and England were formerly 

 one country, as far west as the extremity of Cornwall. This is ren- 

 dered more than probable by the evidence of mineral structure, and 

 Professor Forbes, in this essay, confirms that view by botanical and 

 zoological testimony ; not however as regards France only, for he 

 stretches the once continuous land so much further west as to unite 

 Ireland with Spain. 



We have now to consider the great and important changes in the 

 configuration of the western shores of Northern Europe, at several 

 distant and successive epochs, which this examination of our flora 

 and fauna leads us to infer, and with a high degree of probability. 

 These changes, involving repeated disruptions, subsidences, and ele- 

 vations of the land, constitute the more strictly geological parts of 

 this essay, and as such I will dwell upon them more fully. And first, 

 with regard to the period within which these events took place. 



The creation of the progenitors of the existing flora and fauna 

 of these islands must have taken place, according to our author, 

 subsequently to the close of the Eocene epoch of the tertiary series, 

 and before the commencement of the historical period, or that during 

 which man has been a known inhabitant of the earth. There is 

 abundant evidence, he thinks, that both the flora and fauna of such 

 parts of these islands as were above water during the Eocene period, 

 must have had a climate far warmer than is suitable to their present 

 terrestrial inhabitants ; and the great deposits of peat, formed in 

 part of the remains of vast forests, which probably, during the 

 earliest stages of the true historical epoch, covered a great part of 

 the existing area of the British Isles in many places, overlie fresh- 

 water marls of the post-tertiary epoch, occupying depressions in 

 pleistocene marine deposits ; and he goes on to prove that it was 

 during the post-tertiary epoch that the migration of the general 



