178 
ISLAND LIFE. 
[part t. 
flowering plants. Even in Grinnell Land, within 8| 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 dbies) 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 (Eninghen, but wanting in 
some of the more tropical forms. Again, in the Isle of Mull 
in Scotland, in about 56J° 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 
