326 
ORIGIN OF LIFE IN AMERICA 
than they are at present. Even Mr. Guppy, however, some¬ 
times relents and partly withdraws from his precepts when 
confronted by really difficult cases of distribution. Thus he 
acknowledges that the conifer Dammara vitiensis, which grows 
on the Fiji islands, is unfitted for accidental dispersal by any 
of the known modes of conveyance. The genus Dammara is 
confined to New Zealand, eastern Australia, New Caledonia, 
the New Hebrides and Fiji islands. From this region it ex¬ 
tends westward to Java and Borneo, the centre of distribution 
being in the western Pacific. The absence of the genus from the 
neighbouring Samoan and Tongan groups is, as Mr. Guppy * 
remarks, very significant, and it is evident that the ordinary 
agencies of dispersal by birds, winds or currents have here 
failed to extend Dammara over a few hundred miles of sea. 
For once Mr. Guppy concedes, therefore, that the present 
relations of land and sea do change sometimes, and that, 
“ nolens volens,” we must admit that Dammara may well be 
cited in support of any continental hypothesis affecting the 
western Pacific. Later on, in fact, he expresses the opinion 
that the Fiji islands mark the site of a Mesozoic continental 
area in this region. 
There is thus a certain amount of distributional evidence 
in favour of the theory of the existence of a large land sur¬ 
face in the western Pacific. Whether the remainder of that 
ocean was ever completely occupied by land is a more difficult 
question to answer. But even on the distant Marquesas 
islands granites and gneisses occur, as I mentioned before. 
In the tuffs of the Kermadec islands numerous boulders of 
hornblende granite have been found. New Caledonia consists 
of an ancient series of mica schists and slates with a general 
north-easterly strike. There are also shales containing fossils 
identical with those of the New Zealand Trias, followed by beds 
of coal of Jurassic age. Gneisses, crystalline limestones and 
serpentines, like those of New Caledonia, are reported from the 
New Hebrides. Crystalline schists, granular limestone, 
granite, diorite and gabbro have been discovered on the Fiji 
islands. The occurrence on the Tonga group of fragments 
of garnet, tourmaline and uralitic gabbro suggests the close 
* Guppy, H. B., “A Naturalist in the Pacific,” II., pp. 297—306. 
