away from their surface by the grinding icemill. It is only in the protected floors of flooded caves or among the subsisting drift of glacial and interglacial rivers that we can now find any traces of man's early handicraft. Everywhere else the ice-sheet has planed everything bodily off the face of the land: that is why we find few or no paleolithic skeletons. And we must never forget, in estimating the past history or present fauna and flora of England, that this total blank in our geological and archæological annals cuts in like a complete interruption between the two known ages of human life in this island. Everything that existed in Britain before the last great ice-age was cleaned utterly off the face of the country by the vast system of glaciers which then grew up; everything that now exists in it has come into the land since the date of that gradual but all embracing cataclysm. The men, the animals, the plants which lived here before the ice covered the country belonged to extinct types, or to

species now confined to southern climates ; when the ice cleared away it had swept off almost every relic of their existence, and a new race, a new fauna, and a new flora, came to occupy the virgin soil.

XVI.

SEASIDE WEEDS.

BEHIND the bar which closes the wide throat of the estuary here at Stourmouth a long expanse of sand stretches away inland almost as far as the weirhead that marks the highest point of tidal action in the little river. Some of this sand lies below the level of high water, and is therefore very soft and smooth and muddy; but a large portion of it stands. always high and dry, blown about into uneven ridges and hollows by the strong winds that rush down the opening between the two parallel ranges of neighbouring hills. As I sit upon one of these ridges watching the slow clouds drifting landward before the

It is a

westerly breeze, I have picked from between the sand a little creeping weed, root and all,. with thick, fleshy, cylindrical leaves, and a stout thorn at the end of each. common seaside plant-saltwort or kali; and, like sand-loving plants generally, it has very succulent and juicy foliage. The reason for this fleshy habit under such circumstances seems clear enough. Marshy plants, or plants which live in ordinary moist soils, can get plenty of water whenever they want it, and so they need not store away any against emergencies in case of droughts. Even dry hillside shrubs, like the rosemaries and heaths, can thrust their roots deep into the earth, and so manage always to get a little supply of moisture, sufficient to keep their hard crisp foliage alive, and their sap slowly circulating, even in the driest summer weather. But weeds which live on sand must economise water whenever they can get it. The rain that falls upon the spots where they grow, sinks rapidly through the surface, and in a few

hours the whole place is just as dry as it was before the shower. Accordingly those plants which have accommodated themselves to such situations have necessarily acquired very thick and fleshy leaves; and this acquisition. was the easier to make, because proximity to the sea produces in all plants a slight succulent tendency. As soon as rain falls they drink up all the waterthat comes in the way of their spreading rootlets, and then they store it away in their broad leaves or thick stems till they require it for use. Just as the camel takes one long drink before starting, which supplies his wants for some days in the desert, so the saltwort takes one long drink at each shower and subsists upon that till the next rainfall.

The history of this seaside weed can be easily traced by means of its own existing structure. By origin it is one of the goosefoots, a family of small weedy-looking plants, which grow abundantly in all waste places and over heaps of rubbish near cultivated ground.