Where did Life Begin f 43 



climate. To state such suppositions in full 

 furnishes for them the best possible refutation. 

 The most reasonable conclusion to be 

 drawn from these facts are that the plants 

 whose remains are found in the Arctic coal- 

 beds lived there when the climate of the 

 Arctics was suitable for them, and as there 

 are no obstacles nor inconsistencies to a south- 

 ward movement, and never have been, that 

 all the like species found in the European and 

 American coal-beds came generically from the 

 same Northern locality and ancestry. But as 

 the Arctics are now too cold for these plants, 

 and the tropics are not, it would seem about 

 as sound as the average geological conclu- 

 sion that their appropriate climate came 

 southward with them, or rather that they 

 came with it. But, again, what is true of the 

 course of these plants must have been true 

 of all plants living under the same conditions, 

 and as animals always move with and follow 

 their food, so it is as certain that all the flora 

 and fauna of the Northern hemisphere made 

 a vast Southern movement from the Arctics 

 over the Eastern and Western continents 



