508 ON THE AUSTRALASIAN GUNDLACHIA, 



to Tate, perhaps Amnicola, with another Australian genus, Myce- 

 fopus, to America is even more remarkable. 



To explain similar instances, Mr. H. O. Forbes (to whose 

 courtesy I am indebted for a copy of his very interesting paper) 

 has lately revived the theory of an Antarctic continent and 

 supports it by several weighty arguments, notably the presence 

 in the Patagonian Eocene of marsupial remains nearest allied to 

 those now existing in Australia. A strip of land, with a mild 

 climate, extending across the Pole from Tasmania to Tieira del 

 Fuego, would have afforded a possible route* for the migration 

 from America to Australia of these Tertiary marsupials. But 

 such a land could not have been connected with New Zealand, or 

 the marsupials would have wandered there also. A great south- 

 ward extension of Tertiary New Zealand, considered probable by 

 Sir J. Hector,! would, however, have availed to peoj)le the latter 

 with much of the fauna and flora of the suppositious Antarctic 

 land, in the way that European plants and plants are believed to 

 have reached the Azores. 



This theory of the origin of Australian marsupials would also 

 account for the discontinuous distribution of Gundlaclua. 



The Australasian members of the genus known are G. petterdi, 

 Johnston, G. beddomei^ Petterd, MS., and G. sp., undetermined 

 and probably new, from New Zealand. 



* Had the alternative route advocated ("Island Life," 2nd ed. p. 497) by 

 Wallace, "over what is now the Java Sea," been used by the marsupials, 

 then Timor and the South-Eastern Austro- Malayan Islands should, as 

 Forbes logically remarks, have preserved some remnants of the migrants 

 amid surroundings so like Australia (Vol. iii. p. 22, Supplementary Papers, 

 Royal Geographical Society, 1893). Spencer has demonstrated (Rep. Aust. 

 Assoc. Adv. Sci. 1892, p. 118) "that the diprotodonts had their origin in 

 the Euronotian region," which also seems to me, though not to him, to 

 indicate the south rather than the north-west as the point of marsupial 

 ingress into Australia. In his latest paper Prof. Zittel says (Geol. jMag. 

 Nov^ 1893, Vol. x. p. 512) : " For its [i.e., Australia's] connection at one 

 time with South America, the abundant occurrence of fossil marsupials in 

 the Santa-Cruz beds of Patagonia is valid evidence." See also Lydekker, 

 "Nature," May 5, 1892, Vol. xlvi. pp. 11-12. 



t Address to the Geological Section of the Aust. Assoc. Adv. Sci. 

 Adelaide, 1893. 



