THE GEOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE 

 ALPINE FLORA OF GEEAT BRITAIN. 



The science of Botany occupies a very useful and important 

 place in the study of the past state of our globe. Very consider- 

 able light it serves to throw upon many pages of the stony 

 record, as it reveals under what relative conditions of light and 

 heat, of land and water, the Flora, terrestrial and marine, of the 

 primaeval world, flourished and decayed. From the earliest 

 remains of vegetation, met with in the lower fossiliferous strata, 

 belonging to species now extinct, onwards to the more recent 

 remains met with in our peat mosses and alluvial deposits, 

 Botany, in its own sphere, plays as conspicuous, if not so exten- 

 sive a part, as Zoology does in its sphere, in the contributions 

 which it makes to Geological facts, and the assistance which it 

 lends to Geological deductions. Fossil plants, as well as fossil 

 bones and shells, tell from out their rocky bed to the Palaeon- 

 tologist, their own silent but eloquent tale of past and varied 

 phenomena, leaving him to draw therefrom the conclusions to 

 which the due exercise of his reasoning faculties necessarily 

 leads him. It is not, however, with extinct or fossil plants, 

 whether found in the earlier or more recent strata, that we are 

 at present concerned, but with living species now existing within 

 the limits of Great Britain, which occur in greater or less 

 quantity at considerable altitudes upon our higher mountain 

 ranges. These are generally known by the name of Alpine, 

 in contra-distinction to Lowland plants, and belong to that type 

 of our Flora which has been termed Boreal, from its being more 



