• INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
47 
tribution of the vegetation by transporting the seeds. 
Such facts as those of the existence of ancient forests 
in what are now Arctic regions, and of the migration 
of existing flora over lands now bound fast in perpetual 
ice, appear to some naturalists to call for vaster 
changes than can be brought about by a redisposition 
of the geographical limits of land and sea, and to 
afford evidence of changes in the direction of the 
earth’s axis to the plane of its orbit, and perhaps of 
variations in the ellipticity of the orbit itself.” 
In mineralogy perhaps the most interesting dis¬ 
covery has been the masses of iron found at 
Ovifath. They have all the characteristics regarded 
as distinctive of meteoric iron, and, by most authori¬ 
ties, they are regarded as such. If this view is right, 
these masses of iron constitute the heaviest and oldest 
collection yet discovered of the actual matter of extra- 
telluric worlds. They are remarkable amongst me¬ 
teoric irons for the large proportion of carbonaceous 
matter associated with it. From the position in which 
these masses occurred, it seems probable that they 
formed part of a large fall of meteoric iron during the 
miocene period. In 1872 the Swedish government 
sent a ship out to convey these masses to Sweden. 
The largest weighed twenty-one, eight, and four tons 
respectively. Meteoric iron had been previously found 
