BY CAPTAIN F. W. IIUTTON. 39 



it extended northward to the Kermadecs and even to Tonga and 

 Fiji. Whether it also extended to the Chatham Islands and 

 Macquarie Island we have, he says, no means of ascertaining, but 

 such is possible. Separation of New Zealand from Australia took 

 place at the close of the Cretaceous period, or in the early 

 Tertiary. At a somewhat later date a southern extension of 

 New Zealand towards the Antarctic continent seems probable 

 " as affording an easy passage for the numerous species of South 

 American and Antarctic plants, and also for the identical and 

 closely allied fresh-water fishes of these countries."* 



In 1882 M. Eraile Blanchard contributed a paper to the 

 Academy of Sciences, Paris, called " Proofs of the subsidence of 

 a Southern Continent during recent Geological Epochs."! 



In 1884-5 I made a further contribution to the subject, | in 

 which I abandoned my former idea of a Mesozoic Antarctic 

 Continent, and substituted for it a Mesozoic Pacific Continent, 

 stretching, more or less completely, from Melanesia to Chili. I 

 still adhered to the other portions of my former paper, but laid 

 more sti'ess than before on a greater extension of Antarctic 

 islands during the Older Pliocene. 



In 1888 Dr. Theodore Gill published, in the Memoirs of the 

 National Academy of Sciences, Philadelphia, a paper called "A 

 comparison of Antipodal Faunas," in which he also advocated the 

 existence of " some terrestrial passage way" between Tasmania, 

 New Zealand, and South America, " at a time as late as the close 

 of the Mesozoic period. The evidence of such a connection 

 afforded by congeneric fishes is fortified by analogous repre- 

 sentatives among insects, molluscs, and even amphibians. The 



* Island Life, p. 455. 



t See N. Z. Journal of Science, Vol. i., p. 251. In the same Journal 

 will be found a paper l)y Di'. H. Filhol on the Geological and Zoological 

 Relations of Campbell Island with the neighbouring Islands. 



t Tart I. in N. Z. Journ. Sci. Vol. ii. p. 1, and A. M. N. H. (5), xiii., 

 425; Part II. in N. Z. Journ. Sci. Vol. ii. p. 249, and A. M. N. H. (5), 

 XV., 77. 



