PALEOGEOGEAPHY OF ANTARCTICA HEDLEY. 451 



probably been the chief hindrance to its recognition. The problem 

 before us is, Was the complexity that of time or space, or both ? 



Shall we suppose, for instance, that at the close of a glacial period 

 an Antarctic continent bare of life received a fauna and flora from 

 one neighbor, then developed and transmitted it to another; that 

 a subsequent glaciation swept all life away from the polar area; 

 that a warm interglacial period succeeded when another transfer, 

 but between different neighbors, took place? So that the fauna of 

 New Zealand might represent the life of one interglacial Antarctic 

 phase and that of Australia another. 



Or shall we consider that Tertiaiy Antarctica was an archipelago, 

 the islands of which carried such different fauna and flora that 

 emigrants from one quarter differed from those of another. It is 

 not yet known whether the area between King Edward VII Land 

 and Graham Land is a lobe of the continent or an archipelago, or an 

 independent island. (Darwin, Proc. Roy. Soc. A., vol. 84, 1910, 

 p. 420; and Mawson, Geogr. Journ., vol. 37, 1911, map, p. 613.) 

 In the latter case it is possible that King Edward VII Land may 

 have joined New Zealand, w^hile Tasmania was separately linked 

 to South Victoria Land. Under these circumstances New Zealand 

 and Tasmania may have simultaneously imported an Antarctic and 

 yet a different fauna and flora. 



Or both conditions of interglacial succession and insularity may 

 have combined in the past to produce present effects. 



Prof. H. Pilsbry has shown (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philad., 1900, p. 

 568) that the land molluscan faunas of the Marquesas, Hawaii, and 

 Society Islands are closely related, and that though of primitive 

 type they are harmonic such as befits continental land, not a drift 

 selection such as oceanic islands have. He proposes them as witness 

 to the existence of a Paleozoic or early Mesozoic land mass. The 

 tree lobelias also testify to the antiquity and association of these 

 distant Pacific archipelagoes. (Guppy, "A Naturalist in the Pacific," 

 vol. 2, 1906, p. 250.) Their relations are with the alpine floras of South 

 America and equatorial Africa. A third of the mountain flora of 

 Hawaii is derived from high southern latitudes. It is now suggested 

 that these primitive continental plants and animals reflect a merid- 

 ional Pacific land ray, the fh'st visible vestige of Antarctic extension, 

 as Tasmania was the last. To carry a cold flora across the Equator 

 the land must have been lofty and continuous. In such a range 

 some might see the rib of a former tetrahechal world. 



As the Eocene was both a warm period and a time when land was 

 largely developed in the Patagonian area, it is Hkely that the Archi- 

 platnn fauna then or earlier entered Antarctica. If the Tasmanian 

 fossU Wynyardia is rightly dated Eocene, then during that age some 

 at least of the American migrants reached Australia. 



