by a dry climate; for Dr. Falconer informs me that it is the damp with the heat of the tropics which is so destructive to perennial plants from a temperate climate. On the other hand, the most humid and hottest districts will have afforded an asylum to the tropical natives. The mountain-ranges north-west of the Himalaya, and the long line of the Cordillera, seem to have afforded two great lines of invasion: and it is a striking fact, lately communicated to me by Dr. Hooker, that all the flowering plants, about forty-six in number, common to Tierra del Fuego and to Europe still exist in North America, which must have lain on the line of march. But I do not doubt that some temperate productions entered and crossed even the lowlands of the tropics at the period when the cold was most intense,—when arctic forms had migrated some twenty-five degrees of latitude from their native country and covered the land at the foot of the Pyrenees. At this period of extreme cold, I believe that the climate under the equator at the level of the sea was about the same with that now felt there at the height of six or seven thousand feet. During this the coldest period, I suppose that large spaces of the tropical lowlands were clothed with a mingled tropical and temperate vegetation, like that now growing with strange luxuriance at the base of the Himalaya, as graphically described by Hooker.
Thus, as I believe, a considerable number of plants, a few terrestrial animals, and some marine productions, migrated during the Glacial period from the northern and southern temperate zones into the intertropical regions, and some even crossed the equator. As the warmth returned, these temperate forms would naturally ascend the higher mountains, being exterminated on the lowlands; those which had not reached the equator, would re-migrate northward or southward towards their former
