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president’s address. 
/ 
exerted by the ice and cold on vegetation will be expressed by the 
effect produced at the climax of the Ice Age, not by that of times 
of lesser action which may or may not have intervened during its 
continuance. What we have to do is to state as shortly as possible, 
first, the views of some leading geologists as to this climax, its 
extent and effect on phamogamous vegetation, and then to advert 
to the alterations of land surface, which must in their opinion have 
taken place to produce the present distribution, and their views on 
the migration of plants. 
The term “ migration ” is somewhat unfortunate as applied to 
plants. It is so often and so commonly used as applied to the 
periodic movements of individual animals in search of food, shelter, 
or breeding-places, and conveys with it a sense of individual volition, 
certainly not possessed by plants, which as individuals scarcely 
ever move from their original position at all, and as species travel 
only as they are forced by circumstances entirely beyond their own 
control. 
And here let me say, once for all, that I do not in the least wish 
to put any views before you as either final or dogmatic, but as 
suggestions which, by contrasting different hypotheses and citing 
facts as at present presented to us, may induce you to think about, 
and better still, if it may be so; to study the great problem of Arctic 
distribution of flowering plants, which seems to me to admit of 
a simpler explanation than that proposed by some very eminent 
authorities both at home and on the Continent, and also to bring 
before you views which have been published in Denmark. 
What is the extremest hypothesis of the Arctic Glacial Epoch 
and its effect on the distribution of flowering plants in Europe 
and Greenland 1 ? This will be found in Professor James Geikie’s 
4 Prehistoric Europe,’ shown by a map (plate D), which lias been 
virtually republished so lately as 1891, by Dr. Nathorst, in ‘Nature,’* 
and again by Dr. Wright, in 1893, in 4 Man and the Glacial Period ’ 
(p. 184). This map shows the whole of Skandinavia, Northern 
Russia, Denmark, a great part of Germany, Scotland, Ireland, and 
England, down to the valley of the Thames, as covered with con- 
* ‘Nature,’ vol. xlv. (1891) p. 27 8. 
