166 



The Naturalist. 



after five hours. Near the top (the last few hundred feet being more 

 or less covered with snow) a little short-tailed marmot (n. sp.) was 

 obtained ; the alpine yellow-billed chough {Pyrrhocorax alpinus) in 

 small bands hovered near ; the raven and the common swift incessantly- 

 wheeled, croaked, and screamed around ; and the griffin and great 

 Egyptian vulture, with an eagle or two, soared overhead. 



The snow was (June) covered with tracks of bears {Ursus Syriacus) : 

 but though they had recently been here, they did not put in an 

 appearance on this occasion. Of small birds, the common wheatear 

 (Saxicola oenantht), the English brown linnet (Linota cannabina), the 

 snow-finch {Montifringilla nivalis)^ and Persian horned-lark {Oticoris 

 penicillata) are found. Here, then, in this isolated arctic patch, 

 were the alpine chough, and just below two English winter birds. 



The flora here, on the summit, was equally characteristic of alpine 

 heights — a dwarf, clumpy growth of scrub, with great variety of 

 lovely flowers scattered among them, a dwarf iris (blue), a crocus, 

 three species of Androsace, a Ranunculus, a Fritillariay a Primula, Draba 

 villosa and D. vesicaria, and a rue. But there were no mosses nor 

 saxifrages. On Lebanon, at 5000ft. and upwards, the juniper, the 

 pine and cedar take the place of the ilex and the terebinth of the 

 Judean and Samaritan highlands. 



The coincidence of finding all these boreal forms of plants and 

 animals together, with such undoubted traces of glacial action, seems 

 not only to bear out the evidence gathered from the discovery of 

 remains of extinct northern forms of animals in the breccia of caves 

 in Lebanon — evidence, namely, of the occurrence of a period of great 

 cold subsequent to the later pleiocene age (which is now universally 

 admitted) — but it further seems to suggest, by contrast with the 

 tropical fauna and flora of the Dead Sea basin that, by a parallel 

 chain of evidence a pre-glacial period of great heat had preceded, in 

 which forms of life novr limited to the tropics had penetrated much 

 further north than they do now. When, therefore, the transition 

 from a tropical to a boreal climate supervened, there would be a 

 renewal of the tide of migration, the only survivors of the miocene 

 heat finding a suitable retreat in the deep depressions of the Jordan 

 valley. When again the glacial cold was modified, the higher 

 mountains would be left tenanted by those northern forms of birds 

 and animals, and those sub-arctic plants which were fitted to survive 

 in that situation, and this is exactly what we find on Lebanon and 

 Hermon. 



