ad much if any vegetation
to boast of, and continues, "It is certain, however, that it was clothed
and peopled by an Arctic flora and fauna when the climatic conditions
were somewhat less severe, relics of that flora having been detected at
Bovey Tracey." He believes, therefore, that an Arctic flora took
possession of England as soon as the climate enabled it to live in the
country. Arctic plants, according to this explanation of the sequence of
events, were the first immigrants to reconquer the dreary, plantless
wastes and make them habitable for mammals.

Fortunately these views do not at all agree with those of many of our
leading European botanists and others entitled to have a voice in the
matter. Professor Warming is of opinion that the main mass of the
present flora of Greenland survived the Glacial period in that country
(p. 403); whilst Professor Drude has shown (p. 288) that all plant life
could not possibly have been destroyed in northern countries. He
maintains that the greater part of the Arctic floral elements which
unite Greenland and Scandinavia must have survived the Glacial period in
these countries in sheltered localities. Indeed, he justly remarks,
where at the present moment do we find such plantless wastes? Greenland,
Franz-Josef Land, and Grinnell Land, situated in high Arctic latitudes,
all have a flora composed of flowering plants and cryptograms. "I cannot
understand," he continues (p. 286), "why a flora, possibly mixed with
northern forms but in the main points agreeing with our present floral
elements, should not have persisted throughout the Ice Age even in the
heart of Germany." "To my mind," says Col. Feilden, the well-known
Arctic traveller (_b_, p. 51), "it seems indisputable that several
plants now confined to the polar area must have originated there, and
have outlived the period of greatest ice-development in that region."
The theory in favour of a survival of the pre-glacial flora has been
especially strengthened by the late Mr. Ball (than whom probably no
botanist possessed a better knowledge of Alpine plants), who was
strongly in favour of this view as far as the Alps are concerned. "Is it
credible," he says (p. 576), "that in the short interval since the close
of the Glacial period hundreds of very distinct species and several
genera have been developed on the Alps, and, what is no less hard to
conceive, that several of these non-Arctic species and genera should
still more recentl