Cockayne. — Botanical Excursion to Southern Islands. 315 



while as for Notiodrilus aucklandictcs , Benham, of the Auck- 

 land Islands (7) Lhe same may be said, it in addition having 

 aiiinities with South iVfrican species." 



Spiders, again, are animals which could not travel by 

 means of the sea or be blown for long distances by wind. 

 On the Bounty Islands, which consist entirely of granite, and 

 therefore are of great age, as pointed out before, are many 

 spiders. Specimens of these, collected by me in July last, 

 were sent to Mr. H. R. Hogg, who thus writes regarding them 

 to Professor C. Chilton, to whom I gave the spechuens, " The 

 spiders you sent from Bounty Island are most interesting. 

 Their nearest congeners are from the south of South America, 

 and although they are typical of a well-defined family, the 

 Cybocina, I have had to make a new genus for them." " They 

 would seem to add another link to the connection of South 

 America with .Australia." 



D]-. H. Woodward, in a recent paper, sums up the evi- 

 dence, geological, zoological, and botanical, in favour of a 

 former antarctic continent containing an abundant fauna and 

 flora, and concludes that "a summary of the flora charac- 

 teristic of the Soutliern Hemisphere fully confirms the con- 

 clusions derived from a study of the fauna, and establishes 

 beyond a doubt tlie former existence of extensive land-con- 

 nections between the southern continents and islands in 

 Tertiary times which have since disappeared beneath the 

 ocean"- (105, p. 429). 



Now, all the above does not put us much beyond Hooker's 

 classical theory of a much greater extent of laiid in the 

 Southern Hemisphere to account for that most wonderful 

 fact, the exact similarity of the flora of all the antarctic 

 islands from Cape Horn to Kerguelen Land, a similarity so 

 great that Alboff includes in his term " Fuegian flora" the 

 plants of all the land on the western side of the Andes from 

 and including the Chronos Archipelago and the numerous 

 isles along the coast, the greater part of the north side of the 

 Strait of Magellan, Tierra del Fuego (excepting its northern 

 flat portion), the Falklands, and the other islands at about the 

 same latitude up to and including Kerguelen Land (1). 



I have pointed out above how the presence of the rata 

 forest in the Auckland Islands supports Hutton's theory of a 

 great southern extension of land during the Pliocene period. 

 On the other hand, the Pleurophy limit, meadow may be the 

 last remnant of a former much more extensive southern 

 meadow formation. PletLro2)hyllum, an endemic genus in the 



" During my excursion I collected a number of earthworms, of which 

 probably one from Antipodes and two species from Campbell Island may 

 be of some interest. These are now in Professor W. B. Benham's hands 

 for identification. 



