346 THE GEOLOGY OF THE LABRADOR COAST. 



dinavia, though they have never been found in Europe. 

 By this mode of reasoning we might just as well imagine 

 the clam, Mya arenaria, to have been derived originally 

 from Europe, or the bison to have been derived from 

 the aurochs of Europe. The presence of such charac- 

 teristic Arctic-American forms in Greenland must de- 

 stroy our confidence in the supposed identity of the 

 Greenland flora with that of Lapland, for there are 

 strong grounds for regarding the flora of Greenland as 

 arctic and circumpolar simply, rather than European- 

 Arctic, and that on either side the flora becomes more 

 strongly either American or European, as we go west- 

 ward or eastward of Greenland.* 



When, following the line of the yearly isothermal of 

 32°, we go to the southward on either side of the At- 

 lantic, we find warm and cold currents of air and water 

 intermingling, and thus producing much greater diver- 

 sity of climate than in Greenland. While the Gulf 

 Stream abuts directly upon Scandinavia, some of its 

 effects are felt in Newfoundland and Labrador. Both 

 lands are continental, and shade into temperate regions. 

 There is a very perfect correspondence in the geology 

 and distribution of the formations, and hence, as Hooker 

 observes, there are a large number (230) of plants, 

 common to Labrador and Scandinavia, which do not 

 occur in Greenland. This is parallelled very exactly in 

 the distribution of animal life. In the seas of Labrador 

 and Newfoundland are found forms derived from the 

 more temperate seas of New England, as on the coast of 



* In a paper by Eiig. Warming in Engler's Jahrbucher, x. i88g, on the flora 

 of Greenland, the author concludes that Greenland is not a European province 

 but has nearer relations to America. {Nature, May 30, i88g. p. 1x7.) 



