Excerpt from The Irish Naturalist, 1910, Vol. 19: A Monthly Journal of General Irish Natural History It may be well to state that in my studies of British Mammals I can find no evidence for any former land connection via the Atlantic such as could have been available for the passage of the ancestors of our present mammalian fauna. 011 the contrary, all the evidence goes strongly to indicate that for mammals the connection between America and Eurasia has been via Bering's Straits, and in, geologically speaking, recent times. My view would be that such mammals as have a discontinuous distribu tion, including Britain or Western Europe and America, must have been at one time inhabitants of intervening areas across Asia, from which they have since retired. This type of discontinuous distribution is not so frequent in mammals as in other groups. It is well illustrated by the Pikas, or tailless Hares, whose area of distribution extends from South eastern Europe to the Rocky Mountains, with fossil representatives in the Tertiaries of Europe. The steps between the status of these animals and the Pygmy Shrew, an animal now found (with slight alterations of form) from Ireland to America are probably represented by the Rein deer, and the group of Varying Hares, which had formerly a similar area of distribution, from which they have now, however, in part retired. I do not necessarily contend that the same reasoning should be applied to thelower members of our fauna, and to those plants often styled the American group, but I suggest that the wind rather blows in that direction. I hope to return to this matter at greater length in my book on British Mammals now in course of preparation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.