Antarctic Plants in Polynesia 



By Carl Skottsberg 



"From the southeast, there is a slight but plausible indication of 

 immigration;'— W. A. Setchell, Paths of dispersal, in Phytogeo- 

 graphical Notes on Tahiti, 7926. 



THE RECOGXiTiox o£ an old Antarctic flora element, at least 

 among the Phanerogams, dates back nearly one hundred 

 years to the time when J. D. Hooker, on the famous 

 cruise of the "Erebus" and "Terror" under James Ross, became 

 aware of the biological resemblance between regions so remote 

 from one another as Magellania, New Zealand, and the various 

 islands on the threshold of the Antarctic Sea, and refused to be- 

 lieve that this could be satisfactorily explained merely by assum- 

 ing an exchange across the \^'ide expanses of water under the 

 present phvsiographical conditions. Hooker had a presentiment 

 that a natural explanation was hidden in the imknown history 

 of the immense land mass known as Antarctica. Ross had dis- 

 covered fossil wood of an extinct gynmospermous tree in Ker- 

 guelen, where at the present time no trees can grow, and it did 

 not seem too audacious to postulate the former existence of an 

 Antarctic land flora where there now is solid inland ice. By and 

 by, proofs came that the Arctic regions had harbored a rich, 

 warm-temperate or even subtropical vegetation. It became only 

 a question of time when Antarctica would surrender its buried 

 treasures. C. A. Larsen, the famous Norwegian whaling captain, 

 collected the first fossil wood in western Antarctica in 1892, and 

 ten vears later the Swedish Antarctic Expedition, with Larsen in 

 command of the vessel, discovered rich deposits from the Jurassic 

 and Tertiary containing distinct connecting links between the 



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