Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/205

Rh age onward there were on the two sides of the ocean many species of invertebrate animals, which were either identical, or so closely allied as to be possibly varietal forms. In like manner the early plants of the Upper Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous present many identical species; but this identity becomes less marked in the vegetation of the more modern times.

In so far as plants are concerned, it is to be observed that the early forests were largely composed of cryptogamous plants, and the spores of these in modern times have proved capable of transmission for great distances. In considering this, we can not fail to conclude that the union of simple cryptogamous fructification with arboreal stems of high complexity, so well illustrated by Dr.Williamson, had a direct relation to the necessity for rapid and wide distribution of these ancient trees. It seems also certain that some spores, as, for example, those of the Rhizocarps, a type of vegetation abundant in the Palæozoic, and certain kinds of seeds, as those named Ætheotesta and Pachytheca, were fitted for flotation. Further, the periods of Arctic warmth permitted the passage round the northern belt of many temperate species of plants, just as now happens with the Arctic flora; and when these were dispersed by colder periods they marched southward along both sides of the sea on the mountain-chains. The same remark applies to northern forms of marine invertebrates, which are much more widely distributed in longitude than those farther south. The late Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys, in one of his latest communications to this Association, stated that fifty-four per cent of the shallow-water mollusks of New England and Canada are also European, and of the deep-sea forms thirty out of thirty-five; these last, of course, enjoying greater facilities for migration than those which have to travel slowly along the shallows of the coasts in order to cross the ocean and settle themselves on both sides. Many of these animals, like the common muscle and sand-clam, are old settlers which came over in the Pleistocene period, or even earlier. Others, like the common periwinkle, seem to have been slowly extending themselves in modern times, perhaps even by the agency of man. The older immigrants may possibly have taken advantage of lines of coast now submerged, or of warm periods, when they could creep around by the Arctic shores.

Mr.Herbert Carpenter and other naturalists employed on the Challenger collections have made similar statements respecting other marine invertebrates, as, for instance, the Echinoderms, of which the deep-sea crinoids present many common species, and my own collections prove that many of the shallow-water forms are common. Dall and Whiteaves have shown that some mollusks and Echinoderms are common even to the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America; a remarkable fact, testifying at once to the fixity of these species, and to the manner in which they have been able to take advantage of geographical changes. Some of the species of whelks common to the