The difficulty was so great, that some naturalists were driven to believe that these species were all separately created twice over on these distant peaks.

The determination of a recent glacial epoch, however, soon offered a much more satisfactory solution, and one that is now universally accepted by men of science.

At this period, when the mountains of Wales were full of glaciers, and the mountainous parts of Central Europe, and much of America north of the great lakes, were covered with snow and ice, and had a climate resembling that of Labrador and Greenland at the present day, an Arctic flora covered all these regions.

As this epoch of cold passed away, and the snowy mantle of the country, with the glaciers that descended from every mountain summit, receded up their slopes and towards the north pole, the plants receded also, always clinging as now to the margins of the perpetual snow line.
Thus it is that the same species are now found on the summits of the mountains of temperate Europe and America, and in the barren north-polar regions.
But there is another set of facts, which help us on another step towards the case of the Javanese mountain flora.

On the higher slopes of the Himalayas, on the tops of the mountains of Central India and of Abyssinia, a number of plants occur which, though not identical with those of European mountains, belong to the same genera, and are said by botanists to represent them; and most of these could not exist in the warm intervening plains.