FLORA. 199 
generally a great uniformity of aspect and composition, 
the conclusion is irresistible that after the emergences from 
the ocean of dry land upon a considerable scale, which 
followed the palaeozoic times, the Arctic lands, now cut 
up into archipelagos, must have formed part of a Polar 
continent of sufficient extent to allow of fresh water having 
been able there to play a predominating part, and of deep 
lakes and important rivers having become established 
there ; and we are shut up to the conclusion that one and 
the same vegetation, without other divergencies than any 
arising from slight local diversities, occupied the whole 
extent of this continent, under each of the ages in which 
these fossils were deposited.’ 
At an International Congress of Students of Geographi- 
cal Science, which was held in Paris in the autumn of 
1875, a paper on this ancient Polar vegetation, based on 
the discoveries of the Swedish explorers and the work of 
Dr Heer, was read by Count G. de Saporta. 
In this paper, referring to the views advanced by 
Buffon, at a time when as yet geological ideas were merely 
speculative without any basis of such observations as have 
since been made, in which he alleged that the earth in 
cooling must have cooled most rapidly in the Polar 
regions, and that lands in the extreme north ‘must have 
enjoyed the same temperature which is enjoyed now by 
lands further to the south,* he says that this is substan- 
tially correct, though facts present themselves to geologists 
differently from what they did to the mind of Buffon. 
For the information of those to whom such studies may 
be altogether new, and I anticipate that such there may 
be amongst my readers, who may reside far from towns 
and libraries containing books in which they may find 
the information pre-supposed to be in possession of readers 
* Buffon Des Epoques de la Nature ; Hist. Nat. Gen. et Part. 1778. Suppl. T, ix. 
p. 86. 
