PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
135 
the West of Ireland, and mostly to the mountains of that district. 
Though an Alpine llora it is <piite distinct from X o. 4. Its very 
southern character, its limitation and its extreme isolation, are 
evidences of its antiquity, pointing to a period when a great 
mountain barrier extended across the Atlantic from Ireland to 
Spain.” 
Xathorst’s paper is accompanied by a map. This map does not 
show the glaciation of Ireland, because Bovey Tracey being his 
most western point it was not necessary to go further in that 
direction; but as the lines of extent of ice-sheet are practically the 
same as those of Geikie’s map, we may assume that the lines 
further west would Ire the same also, and Geikie’s map shows 
the whole of Ireland as covered by ice-sheet. What, in that case, 
would become of a “ West Pyre mean Flora of southern character ” ! 
What possible chance of survival would there be for such plants as 
Erica mediterranean Menziesia poUfolia, Saxifraga umbrosa, and 
S. t/eum, or Pinguicula grand ( flora, or of such a Fern as Triclnnnaw s 
radicana, if with Forbes we grant their survival we must deny the 
extent of glaciation shown in Geikie’s Map, or if we grant their 
extinction we must infer for their return by land over Forbes’ 
Barrier between Ireland and Spain a trifling alteration in the 
elevation of the Atlantic sea-bed of not less than 12,000 feet 
(2000 fathoms) since the termination of the Glacial Epoch. 
Whilst the two maps already cited do not allow of any chance 
of this flora remaining during the glacial period, that of Professor 
Carvel Lewis, embodying his views of the extension of the ice-sheet, 
does leave a sufficient portion of Southern Ireland uncovered to 
afford a possible asylum for at least a portion of it. You will find 
the two contrasted in a map in Professor Bonney’s ‘ Ice-work Past 
and Present’ just published. 
The “ Skandinavian ” Flora — a name to which Warming strongly 
objects, as lie regards Greenland as quite as much if not more “ the 
mother country ” of it than Europe — is the most extensively 
distributed at the present day of any flora in the world, and as 
Sir J. I). Hooker writes : “ Regarded as a whole, the Arctic Flora is 
decidedly Skandinavian.” Ought not this sentence to be reversed, 
von. VI. 
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