Mueller. — On the Ancient Connections of N.Z. 431 



over, the many Lias fossils which I saw in 1839 and 1840 in 

 a collection at Jever, nearly all of which were changed into 

 pyrites, point to the same fact. . . . There cannot, there- 

 fore, be here any question of subsidence, as assumed by 

 Dr. Von Jhering ; the bridge between Norway and Scot- 

 land was simply broken through and washed away by the 

 waves. . . 



But, to return : As before mentioned, Dicncmonella hunerti 

 (mihi) , the nearest allies of which occur in great numbers only 

 in New South Wales, is found on the Sierra Geral, in Brazil. 

 A somewhat similar case was recently noticed by me. I was 

 greatly astonished, when naming the collection of mosses of 

 the late Mr. Hildebrant — who unfortunately died while still 

 young in Madagascar — to find a type which very charac- 

 teristically united the flora of the Cordilleras with that of 

 central Madagascar — viz., the genus Lindigia. But my 

 astonishment increased when I found also a second and nob 

 less characteristic form in the genus Streptopogon. How came 

 these two American endemic moss types to Madagascar? 

 The importance of the matter is much increased by the ento- 

 mological collections, for the Lepidoptera and the Coleoptera 

 confirmed what I had already found in the mosses. Can a 

 land bridge have existed at one time between Madagascar and 

 the New World ; and, if so, how could it have extended from 

 the Andes to Madagascar, as the said mosses live only at 

 medium heights on the Cordilleras ? Again, I recently received 

 a collection from a young Swede — Dusen — from the Cameroon, 

 in tropical west Africa, and found in it a new Lindigia, but 

 from low-lying regions. But, as I knew it to exist in Africa, it 

 was only the fact of its occurrence in low-lying regions that 

 was surprising to me. But the fact in itself formed only a 

 fresh point of evidence ; for it is well known to the initiated 

 that in the west African tropical zone many plants are met 

 with which have corresponding types in South America. 

 Several mosses are even identical with those of tropical 

 America — viz., Octoblepharum albidum, which goes down to 

 subtropical South xYfrica ; and Bliizogonium spiniforme, which 

 is also found on the Comoro Islands. Ascending from the 

 lower regions of the Cameroon to its high plateaux towards 

 Goetterberg, a believer in bridges would be compelled to doubt, 

 for at these considerable heights we meet with corresponding 

 floras of Mexico and Abyssinia ! ! , an observation already made 

 by Sir J. Hooker when examining the collections of the 

 German botanist Mann. But this is not all. Everywhere in 

 tropical lowlands where malaria is brewed, no matter in what 

 part of the earth, but especially in the mangrove forests of 

 brackish water, a moss flora occurs the types of which are the 

 same everywhere, and the species are so remarkably alike that 



