134 
president’s address. 
Arctic Poppy, the bright yellow Pediculciris, and several Saxifrages 
were common, and in sheltered clefts of the basalt ridges Ferns 
were unfolding their bright green fronds.” 
In ‘ Nature,’ in 1891,'"' Nathorst published an important paper 
on Distribution qf Arctic Plants during the Glacial Epoch, showing 
how he and others had found remains of Arctic plants in many 
localities south of the supposed ice-sheet to which they were driven. 
It will be sufficient for us to quote as an example one of these 
finds by Pengelly at Bovey Tracey in Devonshire, consisting 
of Betula nana , Scdix myrtilloides , S. cinerea, and another Willow 
undeterminable. But I would ask : Is this southern extension of 
Arctic forms incompatible with their also holding their own in 
more northern localities? Is it not exactly what we should expect, 
that such plants would have a much more extended range during 
the lower temperature of the Glacial Epoch? 
Nathorst concludes his paper thus : “ The theory advanoed by 
E. Forbes so far back as 1840, that the Alpine Flora of Europe, 
so far as it is identical with the flora of the Arctic and sub-Arctic 
zones of the old world, is a fragment of a flora which was diffused 
from the north, and that the termination of the glacial period in 
Europe was marked by a recession of an Arctic fauna and flora 
northwards — may now be regarded as definitely proved.” Forbes’ 
views were first set out in a paper read before the British 
Association at Cambridge in 1845,+ and those who remember what 
happened to them at the pen of the author | of ‘ Cybele,’ the most 
accurate authority on British topographical botany of our day, may 
feel a little surprise at their resuscitation half a century afterwards, 
at all events, Forbes and Nathorst, as they hold irreconcilable 
views as to the distribution of the British flora cannot both be 
right. Forbes divided the British flora into five parts, which he 
arranged in order of age, and of which the Alpine flora of Wales, 
the North of England, and Scotland was the fourth. The first and 
oldest flora he describes thus : — 1. West Pyremean Flora confined to 
* ‘ Nature,’ vol. xlv., p. 273. 
+ Abstract in 1 Literary Gazette’ said to be by Forbes himself. 
I ‘ Cybele If rita,’ vol. i. Appendix. 
