ON THE FLORA OF THE GHOR. 157 



Arabia. This local extermination is due almost entirely to drought. 

 There may or may not have been a warmer period since the glacial, but 

 with increased moisture and the present temperature the lower valleys of 

 Sinai and the 'Arabah would be quite capable of supporting all the hotter 

 plant-life of the Gh6r. 



Of the present ' Desert flora ' of the Gh6r — I mean that which is 

 properly so called — there is little to say. These are species which require 

 no oases to exist in, and have no difficulty in spreading. It is a portion 

 of this group of plants that is dealt with by Mr. Lowne in his excellent 

 essay on the floras of the Ghuweirah and Mahauwat Widies at the south- 

 west end of the Dead Sea. 



Canon Tristram, in dealing with this subject, travels back to miocene 

 times for a solution of the existence of Nubian and Ethiopian forms in 

 the Ghor. With all deference, I regret to find myself unable to agree 

 with him. Were his theory confined in its conclusions to Palestine — a 

 country with whose natural history no one is so familiar — I should hardly 

 venture to express an opinion ; but when he derives this flora from 

 miocene times, we have Professor Forbes' old theory served up afresh, 

 and the advent of oiir so-called ' Spanish flora ' in Ireland is made syn- 

 chronous with that of the Ghor from its more southern home. Forbes' 

 theory dates the accession of the Spanish group of plants still lingering 

 in Kerry and Connemara, but at no intermediate points, to ante-glacial 

 times, when, it was suggested, there may have been continuous or contiguous 

 land from Kerry to Spain. But geologists have to meet facts, and I think 

 no botanist will now admit that these remnants of a southern flora, able, 

 and no more, to hold their own in the present mild Irish climate, could 

 have existed throughout the glacial period, when, in all probability, the 

 south-west of Ireland was submerged in a frozen sea for several hundred 

 feet below its present level. As I have always had a pet aversion to this 

 part of Professor Forbes' theory (which I have seen recently more than 

 once quoted), so I feel compelled to disagree with Canon Tristram, who 

 looks on the tropical flora of the Gh6r as a ' northern outline ' dating from 

 miocene times. I have already alluded to the probable climatic condition 

 of the Jordan Valley during the glacial epoch. It seems to me quite 

 impossible that the more tropical portion of Its now-existing life could 

 have then survived, supposing it to have arrived there previously. It 



