No. 410.] THE EUROPEAN FAUNA. 107 
The latter might have been dismissed in a few words, were 
it not that Dr. Scharff, in his history of the European fauna, 
practically has no reference to the fauna of Iceland, the origin 
of which certainly is as European as that of Great Britain itself. 
Almost the only allusion to the famous island is a brief para- 
graph to the effect that if a land connection existed between 
Greenland and Scotland in that direction “it must have been 
in very early Tertiary times." Granting that there was no 
such continuous land bridge any more at the beginning of 
Pleistocene times or even during the Pliocene, by which the 
larger herbivorous animals could have migrated from Greenland 
to Iceland and Scotland, it is evident that the conditions must 
have been much different from what they are indicated to be 
on Dr. Scharff's diagrammatic maps on pages 156 and 170, in 
which the present sea level is maintained at Iceland and eastern 
Greenland, while the continental platform is raised about 200 
fathoms at the western coasts of Ireland, Scotland, Norway, 
and Spitsbergen. Under such a distribution of land and water 
Iceland, though still an island, must have been much larger, 
while the Faróe Islands, forming a large island of nearly the 
present size of Ireland, were separated from Scotland by a 
comparatively narrow channel, and numerous islets on the high 
ridge between the Faróe Islands and Iceland constituted a 
series of stepping-stones to the latter. Such a state of affairs 
would of course effectually block the way of the mammals, 
without being a bar to many other animals, as the birds, for 
instance. To any one familiar with the land birds of Iceland 
it is perfectly plain that it would require at least that much of 
an interrupted land connection to make it possible for them to 
have developed a highly frequented migration route across that 
now nearly trackless ocean. I will mention only one example, 
viz., the large-winged race of the common wheatear (Saxicola 
ænanthe leucorhoa). This race, characterized by a length of wing 
Greenland and adjacent 
ca and to migrate in 
he Shetlands, Great 
tern edge of France 
rning in spring the 
of over 100 mm., is known to breed in 
portions of northeastern Arctic Ameri 
winter over Iceland, the Faróe Islands, t 
Britain, and probably thence along the wes 
and the Pyrenean peninsula to Africa, retu 
