THE EUROPEAN SEAS. 



113 



and west of Europe ; pretty uniformly elevated. 

 This then could, with every probability, have been 

 the epoch of the connection or approximation of 

 Ireland and Spain. My own belief is, that a great 

 post-miocene land, bearing the peculiar flora and 

 fauna of the type now known as Mediterranean, 

 extended far into the Atlantic, past the Azores, and 

 that, in all probability, the great semicircular belt 

 of gulf-weed ranging between the fifteenth and 

 forty-fifth degrees of north latitude, and constant 

 in its place, marks the position of the coast-line of 

 that ancient land, and had its parentage on its solid 

 bounds. Over this land that flora of which we have 

 now a few fragments in the west of Ireland, might 

 with facility have migrated. This would give us a 

 new antedate, and enables us to declare our entire 

 existing terrestrial flora and fauna as post-miocene." 



This argument I further supported from the evi- 

 dence of the fossils found in the drift (the upheaved 

 bed of the glacial sea) of the south of Ireland. 

 " The abundance of Purpura lapillus, and the pre- 

 sence of Littorina littorea, may be mentioned as 

 especially characteristic of the shelly gravels which 

 in Wexford have been found by Captain (now Colo- 

 nel) James to contain numerous specimens of the re- 

 versed variety of the Fusus antiquus, known under 

 the name of Fusus contrarius, and common in the red 

 crag. At present the reversed form is as rare among 

 specimens of that Fusus, as the dextral form was 

 anciently. It is difficult to conjecture a sufficient 



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