40 DISTRIBUTION OF SOUTHERN FAUNAS, 



separation of the several areas must, however, have occurred 

 Kttle later than the early Tertiary, inasmuch as the salt-water 

 fishes of corresponding isotherms found along the coasts of the 

 now widely separated lands, are to such a large extent specifically 

 difierent." 



In 1 892 Dr. H. von Jhering published a paper in the Trans. 

 N. Z. Inst. Vol. xxiv. " On the Ancient Relations between New 

 Zealand and South America." He here supposes that during the 

 whole of the Mesozoic era a continent — which he calls Archiplata 

 — existed which included Chili and Patagonia and extended into 

 the South Pacific. This gradually subsided, throwing off first 

 the Polynesian Islands, then New Zealand, and finally New 

 Guinea and Australia. All this took place before and during 

 the Eocene period; after which Archiplata was joined to Archi- 

 guyana, which occupied the high lands of Brazil and Venezuela. 

 Dr. F. Ameghino has also, quite independently, advocated a 

 Pacific Mesozoic continent to explain the relations of the Eocene 

 marsupials of Patagonia to those of Australia, and Prof. Zittel 

 has expressed a favourable opinion of this theory.* 



In 1893 Dr. H. O. Forbes published a paper in the "Geo- 

 graphical Journal (Supplementary Papers ") called " The Chatham 

 Islands : their relation to a former southern continent," in which 

 he reproduced the old theory of an Antarctic continent, but made 

 it last until late Pliocene times, when, he thinks, the Antarctic 

 fauna and flora Avere driven north by the coming on of a glacial 

 epoch. This continent is supposed to have been unconnected 

 either with S. Africa or with W. Australia (which formed a large 

 island); but sent out prolongations northward, (1) to Madagascar 

 and the Mascarene Islands, (2) to Tasmania and E. Australia, 

 thence through New Guinea and the Solomon Islands to Borneo 

 and Sumatra, (3) to New Zealand, New Caledonia and Fiji; and 

 (4) to S. America, reaching to beyond the Amazon. 



In the same year Mr. C. Hedley published in the Proc. Linn. 

 Soc. N.S.W. a short note advocating the existence during Mesozoic 



* See Geol. Mag. New Series, Decade hi., Vol. 10, p. 512 (1893). 



