6. This state of things did not materially differ from that now
existing, under corresponding latitudes, in the North American, Atlantic,
and Arctic seas, and on their bounding shores. 7. The Alpine floras of
Europe and Asia, so far as they are identical with the flora of the Arctic
and sub-Arctic zones of the Old World, are fragments of a flora which was
diffused from the north, either by means of transport not now in action on
the temperate coasts of Europe, or over continuous land which no longer
exists. The deep sea fauna is in like manner a fragment of the general
glacial fauna. 8. The floras of the islands of the Atlantic region,
between the Gulf-weed Bank and the Old World, are fragments of the Great
Mediterranean flora, anciently diffused over a land consistuted out of the
upheaval and never again subjerged bed of the (shallow) Meiocene Sea. This
great flora, in the epoch anterior to, and probably, in part, during the
glacial period, had a greater extension northward than it now presents. 9.
The termination of the glacial epoch in Europe was marked by a recession of
an Arctic fauna and flora northward, and of a fauna and flora of the
Mediterranean type southward; and in the interspace thus produced there
appeared on land the Germanic fauna and flora, and in the sea that fauna
termed Celtic.
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