178 



ISLAND LIFE. 



[PAET T. 



flowering plants. Even in Grinnell Land, within 8 J degrees of 

 the pole, a similar flora existed, twenty-five species of fossil 

 plants having been collected by the last Arctic expedition, of 

 which eighteen were identical with the species from other Arctic 

 localities. This flora comprised poplars, birches, hazels, elms, 

 viburnums, and eight species of conifers, including the swamp 

 cypress, and the Norway spruce (Pinus abies) which does not 

 now extend beyond 69|^° N. 



Fossil plants closely resembling those just mentioned have 

 been found at many other Arctic localities, especially in Iceland, 

 on the Mackenzie River in 65° N. Lat. and in Alaska. As an 

 intermediate station we have, in the neighbourhood of Dantzic 

 in Lat. 55° N.,a similar flora, with the swamp-cypress, sequoias, 

 oaks, poplars, and some cinnamons, laurels, and figs. A little 

 further south, near Breslau north of the Carpathians, a rich 

 flora has been found allied to that of QEninghen, but wanting in 

 some of the more tropical forms. Again, in the Isle of Mull 

 in Scotland, in about 56^° N. Lat., a plant-bed has been dis- 

 covered containing a hazel, a plane, and a sequoia, apparently 

 identical with a Swiss Miocene species. 



We thus find one well-marked type of vegetation spread from 

 Switzerland and Vienna to North Germany, Scotland, Iceland, 

 Greenland, Alaska, and Spitzbergen, some few of the species 

 even ranging over the extremes of latitude between (Eninghen 

 and Spitzbergen, but the great majority being distinct, and ex- 

 hibiting decided indications of a decrease of temperature accord- 

 ing to latitude, though much less in amount than now exists. 

 Some writers have thought that the great similarity of the floras 

 of Greenland and (Eninghen is a proof that they were not con- 

 temporaneous, but successive ; and that of Greenland has been 

 supposed to be as old as the Eocene. But the arguments yet 

 adduced do not seem to prove such a difference of age, because 

 there is only that amount of specific and generic diversity between 

 the two which might be produced by distance and difference of 

 temperature, under the exceptionally equable climate of the 

 period. We have even now examples of an equally wide range 

 of well-marked types ; as in temperate South America, where 

 many of the genera and some of the species range from the 



