424 MISCELLANEA. [1881. 



Have not some Australian extinct forms been lately found in 

 Australia ? or have I dreamed it ? 



Again, the recent discovery of plants rather low down in 

 our Silurian beds is very important. • 



Nothing is more extraordinary in the history of the Vege- 

 table Kingdom, as it seems to me, than the apparently very 

 sudden or abrupt development of the higher plants. I have 

 sometimes speculated whether there did not exist somewhere 

 during long ages an extremely isolated continent, perhaps 

 near the South Pole. 



Hence I was greatly interested by a view which Saporta 

 propounded to me, a few years ago, at great length in MS. 

 and which I fancy he has since published, as I urged him to 

 do — viz., that as soon as flower-frequenting insects were de- 

 veloped, during the latter part of the secondary period, an 

 enormous impulse was given to the development of the 

 higher plants by cross-fertilization being thus suddenly formed. 



A few years ago I was much struck with Axel Blytt's* 

 Essay showing from observation, on the peat beds in Scandi- 

 navia, that there had apparently been long periods with more 

 rain and other with less rain (perhaps connected with Croll's 

 recurrent astronomical periods), and that these periods had 

 largely determined the present distribution of the plants of Nor- 

 way and Sweden. This seemed to me, a very important essay. 



I have just read over my remarks and I fear that they will 

 not be of the slightest use to you. 



I cannot but think that you have got through the hardest, 

 or at least the most difficult, part of your work in having 

 made so good and striking a sketch of what you intend to 

 say ; but I can quite understand how you must groan over 

 the great necessary labour. 



I most heartily sympathise with you on the successes of 

 B. and R. : as years advance what happens to oneself becomes 

 of very little consequence, in comparison with the careers of 

 our children. 



* See footnote, p. 392. 



