238 
M. L. FERNALD 
would expect in Newfoundland, that is, the typical plants of the same 
latitude in eastern Canada, such species for instance as Clematis 
virginiana, Asclepias syriaca, Popiilus grandidentata, Acer pensylvani- 
cum and A. Saccharum, Eupatorium perfoliatum, Solidago squarrosa, 
Solidago jtincea, Aster macrophyllus, Aster acuminatus, etc., indicates 
that the flora of Newfoundland, except such species as have been 
derived across the narrow Straits of Belle Isle, has not reached the 
island by ocean currents or by winds, especially from the west and 
southwest; for, if these factors were important in carrying the western 
and southwestern plants to Newfoundland, we should expect such 
wind-distributed species as I have named and which are all abundant 
at the eastern edge of Canada to have reached Newfoundland amongst 
the first invaders. 
A similar absence of the ordinary Canadian mammals and resident 
birds is conspicuous; for example, the common moose, red .deer, 
porcupine, and spruce partridge, of all the Canadian forests opposite, 
are quite unknown in Newfoundland, and there the mammal- and 
resident bird-fauna is composed, like the flora, of species derived from 
Labrador or from the southwestern coastal margin of the continent, 
while certain land-snails have been pointed out as identicjal between 
Newfoundland and western Europe. In other words, the animal life 
of Newfoundland shows the same derivation as the plant life. 
In explaining^ the migration to Newfoundland of a large element 
from the Atlantic coastal plain of the United States it has been neces- 
sary to reconstruct the Tertiary continental shelf, which is now de- 
pressed as a shallow bench off the east Atlantic coast of America; and 
from the botanical and zoological evidence, as well as from recently pub- 
lished geological evidence,^ it now seems perfectly settled that the 
continental shelf formed in the late Pleistocene and even later a nearly 
continuous although somewhat interrupted floor from New Jersey and 
southern New England, by way of Sable Island and the Grand Banks, 
to southern and eastern Newfoundland. And upon this floor the 
southern flora and fauna migrated to Newfoundland ; but the unfavor- 
able conditions of a sand-floor with meager forest and coastal plain 
bogs and barrens proved unattractive to the life of our rich Canadian 
forest, with the result that the forest species both of animals and 
plants, or the species which demand rich or basic soils, were for the 
most part unable to cross to Newfoundland. 
^Rhodora, 13: 135-162, 1911. 
4 Barrel!, Amer. Journ, Sci. IV. 40: 1-22. 191 5. 
