28 Origin of the British Flora. 
greater continuity of the land. The difficulty is so real 
that I have devoted particular attention to the attempt to 
discover in what manner large soft seeds, which cannot ‘be 
carried in fur or feathers, and are killed by digestion, can 
be transported across deserts. It will be shown in Chapter 
IV. that since suitable climatic conditions came into 
existence there has been no sufficient change of land or 
sea to give a continuous land passage from the Continent 
for these plants—yet, here they are and their presence 
must be explained. 
The British plants to which these remarks particularly 
apply are the following :—the Oak, Beech, Ash, Maple, 
Privet, Spindle Tree, Ivy, Flags, Convolvulus, various 
Mallows, White and Yellow Waterlilies, and Apple. In 
each of these, except sometimes in the Waterlilies and 
Apple, the fruit is eaten for the nutriment contained in the 
seed itself, which is therefore generally destroyed. No 
doubt in many of these plants the seeds are occasionally 
dispersed by rivers ; but this will only scatter them along 
the lower part of the same river-basin or at most some 
distance along shore; it will not carry Waterlilies to 
isolated lakes or to other river basins, nor can dry-soil 
plants be carried thus to scattered islands. 
The largest edible seed we have is the acorn ; if it can 
be transported freely for considerable distances uninjured, 
the difficulty in the other cases must be more apparent 
than real. In peat-mosses, on open chalk downs, and in 
ploughed fields, often a mile or more from the nearest 
mature tree, one constantly finds seedling Oaks, which last 
a few months or, perhaps, a couple of years, and then die, 
the conditions being unfavourable. I have for several 
years noted the position of these seedling oaks, finding 
them in places where no mammal would take the acorns. 
For instance, they are common in any of the New Forest 
