America would bring the earliest higher plants and animals to our
shores. But in this I soon found I was quite mistaken. The distance to
be traversed was so great, and the current so slow, that the few seeds
or germs of American species cast up upon the shore from time to time
were mostly far too old and water-logged to show signs of life in such
ungenial conditions. It was from the nearer coasts of Europe, on the
contrary, that our earliest colonists seemed to come. Though the
prevalent winds set from the west, more violent storms reached us
occasionally from the eastward direction; and these, blowing from
Europe, which lay so much closer to our group, were far more likely to
bring with them by waves or wind some waifs and strays of the European
fauna and flora.

I well remember the first of these great storms that produced any
distinct impression on my islands. The plants that followed in its wake
were a few small ferns, whose light spores were more readily carried on
the breeze than any regular seeds of flowering plants. For a month or
two nothing very marked occurred in the way of change, but slowly the
spores rooted, and soon produced a small crop of ferns, which, finding
the ground unoccupied, spread when once fairly started with
extraordinary rapidity, till they covered all the suitable positions
throughout the islands.

For the most part, however, additions to the flora, and still more to
the fauna, were very gradually made; so much so that most of the
species now found in the group did not arrive there till after the end
of the Glacial epoch, and belong essentially to the modern European
assemblage of plants and animals. This was partly because the islands
themselves were surrounded by pack-ice during that chilly period, which
interrupted for a time the course of my experiment. It was interesting,