Short Notes and Queries. 



135 



consider that it was an extravagant suggestion tliat Britain may- 

 have been an island for a hundred thousand years. "^'^ If, then, out of 

 1400 species which it produces, not one is distinct, this is a very sig- 

 nificant fact. 



Perhaps the most important of all the generalizations established by 

 Mr. Watson's labours was his separating out the plants of Britain 

 according to their types of distribution. He worked out the fact that 

 out of the 1425 British plants 5:32 are spread through the length and 

 breadth of the island ; that a little over 600 are either confined to 

 England or become quite rare when the Scotch border is crossed, and 

 soon cease in a northern direction ; that out of these, 70 show a 

 preference for the western and 127 for the eastern side of the island ; 

 and that the boreal element is represented by 200 species, which are 

 concentrated in the Scotch Highlands, and occur southward only 

 amongst the mountains. And here again, the seas that separate 

 Britain from the Continent seem to be of very small account. The 

 500 species universal in Britain are mostly spread over the whole area 

 of the Continent ; the 200 boreal species are plants of Scandinavia, 

 which often extend southwards to the Alps of Central Europe. The 

 600 characteristically English species are plants of the great Central 

 European plain ; and the moisture-loving types, restricted with us to 

 Ireland and the south-west of England, creep up from Portugal and 

 the Asturias, and the country round Bordeaux, just as if no broad 

 channel of waters intervened. The memoir f in which, long ago. Prof. 

 Edward Forbes tried to work out what these types of distribution 

 imply, is well known. I will not pursue the subject further now, 

 than to point out the striking testimony which this whole series of 

 facts furnishes to the long-continued stability of the present condition 

 of things, as regards our specific types. 



(To he continued.) 



Sljort ^oti^s ant) CJumes. 



Otters in Halifax Parish. — About 70 years ago Squire Pinder shot 

 an otter from EUand Bridge, as it was fishing on the damstones, in the 

 grey of the morning. About 40 years since, James Hobson and others 

 caught one in the Calder, in a large fishing-net ; another was caught at 



* See Wallace's "Island Life," p. 318. 



tMemoirs of Geological Survey, vol. i., p. 336. See also the shorter paper in 

 the Anrals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. xvi., p. 126. 



