ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Hx 



proves that during the Miocene period there was an Atlantic gulf 

 separating the new world from the old, and favours the notion that 

 the coast-line of a post-Miocene European land would be somewhere 

 in the central Atlantic, about the position of the great Focus bank. 

 The probability of the existence of such a land is further borne out 

 by the fact, that the floras of the groups of islands between the 

 Gulf-weed bank and the mainland of the old world are all members 

 of one flora, itself a member of the Mediterrariean type. In the 

 Madeira group, the Canaries, Cape de Verde islands, and other East 

 Atlantic islands, there are marine tertiary strata, apparently of 

 Miocene age, probably parts of one system of land that was once 

 continuous, for their botanical and zoological characters agree as 

 part of one province. Their floras are all closely related to those 

 of the nearest mainland, and are also mutually related, through 

 endemic plants, to each other. We learn from Humboldt, that 

 Madeira and TenerifFe contain plants in common with Portugal, 

 Spain, the Azores, and the north-west coast of Africa. 



Nothing certainly can mark more strongly than this instance, how, 

 in our endeavours to trace the past history of our earth, a new light 

 may dawn in a quarter the least expected ; for certainly nothing 

 a priori seemed more improbable, than that an examination of the 

 botanical nature of the floating Gulf- weed should suggest the pos- 

 sible extension in former ages of the continent of Europe into the 

 middle of the Atlantic. The author himself designates his hypothesis 

 as a startling one ; and from its novelty and boldness it may perhaps 

 be so characterized. It is true, that between the Gulf-weed and the 

 shores of Europe and Africa that are opposite to it, there is a great 

 depth of water, not less than 700 fathoms, or 4200 feet, as I am informed 

 by a high authority; but that cannot be considered by the geologist as 

 a valid objection. There are beds of the Miocene epoch at a height 

 of 6000 feet above the sea-level in the Lycian Taurus, and the bed 

 of the sea must therefore have been elevated not only to that amount, 

 but to whatever more must be added for the depth of sea in which 

 the beds were deposited. If at all periods there have been elevatory 

 movements, there is no improbability in supposing subsidences of 

 equal amount to have occurred. Mr. Darwin has shown, in the 

 recent work to which I have referred, that, during a modern part of 

 the secondary period, there must have been a subsidence, in mass, 

 to the amount of several thousand feet of the greater part of the 

 continent of South America, a subsequent elevation, and again sub-- 

 sidence ; so that neither in point of extent of area moved, nor of depth 

 of subsidence, is the hypothesis of Professor Forbes unsupported by 

 proofs of similar movements in other parts of the world. 



It is thus to a period subsequent to the close of the Miocene epoch, 

 and after the deposits formed in the sea of that epoch had been 

 raised up to form dry land, that our author traces the origin of what 

 he considers the most ancient part of our island flora, that repre- 

 sented by the relics of it on the western coast of Ireland, an assem- 

 blage of plants small as to number of species, but most of them 

 playing an important part in the mountain vegetation of the region, 



