76 On the Origin and Distribution of the British Flora.
group of plants, including the gorses, broom, and allied
plants, Lobelias, Gladiolus, Sibthorpias, and heaths, which are
"more nearly allied to corresponding Cape species than they
are to each other." The severity of the winter checks the
extension of these plants to the East; and they seem to have
travelled from Natal to Abyssinia, and from thence to the
Cameroons and the Atlas Mountains. This migration may
have taken place partly as a return current at the close of a
glacial period; but it would seem more probable that some
of these plants, now confined to Portugal, the Asturian
Mountains of the north of Spain, and Ireland, are the relics
of a still earlier migration, probably Miocene. Ireland may
not have been so entirely submerged in glacial times as Great
Britain.
The earliest botanical work of Mr. Hewett "Watson was a
pamphlet entitled 'Outlines of the Geographical distribution
of British plants,' printed in 1832, in which he groups our
flora under eight types of distribution, namely, British,
English, Intermediate, Scottish, Highland, Germanic, At-
lantic, and Local or doubtful. At the Cambridge meeting
of the British Association, in the following year, Professor
Edward Forbes, with his characteristic acumen, stated in-
dependently conclusions almost identical.25 The plants of
Watson's British, English, Intermediate, and Scottish types
Forbes grouped under the name of Germanic. Those termed
by Watson "Germanic" plants, found in the East and South-
East of England, and mainly affecting a limestone or chalky
soil, he termed Kentish; whilst of the seventy species con-
stituting Watson's Atlantic group he separated eleven, namely,
six species of Saxifrage, two heaths, Arbutus, Menziesia,
Arabisciliata, occurring in Ireland, under the name of
Asturian, from their nearest continental habitat; terming
the remainder Armorican, from their affinity to the flora of
Normandy and Brittany. Disregarding the accidentally
associated Kentish group, and putting on one side the Local
25 Afterwards elaborated into his memoir 'On the connexion between
the existing Fauna and Flora of the British Isles and the Geographical
Changes which have affected their Area.'—Mem. Geol. Survey, vol. i. 336.