in the north and west of Europe,
but in the Azores too; and, what is more strange, in Labrador. Now, as
ling can neither swim nor fly, does not common sense tell you that all
those countries were probably joined together in old times?

Well: but it seems so strange.

So it is, my child; and so is everything. But, as the fool says in
Shakespeare--

"A long time ago the world began,
With heigh ho, the wind and the rain."

And the wind and the rain have made strange work with the poor old world
ever since. And that is about all that we, who are not very much wiser
than Shakespeare's fool, can say about the matter. But again--the London
Pride grows here, and so does another saxifrage very like it, which we
call Saxifraga Geum. Now, when I saw those two plants growing in the
Western Pyrenees, between France and Spain, and with them the beautiful
blue butterwort, which grows in these Kerry bogs--we will go and find
some--what could I say but that Spain and Ireland must have been joined
once?

I suppose it must be so.

Again. There is a little pink butterwort here in the bogs, which grows,
too, in dear old Devonshire and Cornwall; and also in the south-west of
Scotland. Now, when I found that too, in the bogs near Biarritz, close
to the Pyrenees, and knew that it stretched away along the Spanish coast,
and into Portugal, what could my common sense lead me to say but that
Scotland, and Ireland, and Cornwall, and Spain were all joined once?
Those are only a few examples. I could give you a dozen more. For
instance, on an island away there to the west, and only in one spot,
there grows a little sort of lily, which is found I believe in Brittany,
and on the Spanish and Portuguese heaths, and even in North-west Africa.
And that Africa and Spain were joined not so very long ago at the Straits
of Gibraltar there is no doubt at all.

But where did the Mediterranean Sea run out then?

Perhaps it did not run out at all; but was a salt-water lake, like the
Caspian, or the Dead Sea. Perhaps it ran out over what is now the
Sahara, the great desert of sand, for, that was a sea-bottom not long
ago.

But then, how was this land of Atlantis joined to the Cape of Good Hope?

I cannot say how, or when either. But this is plain: the place in the
world where the most beautiful heaths grow is the Cape of Good Hope? You
know I showed you Cape heaths once at the nursery gardener's at home.

Oh yes, pink, and yellow, a