CONTINENTAL DISPLACEMENT — SCHUCHERT 273 



show clearly enough that we are treating here of one marine austral 

 realm (see Table I). If the migration routes had been short, say 

 within some hundreds of miles, which would be the case if Africa and 

 South America had been united, these marine faunas would have a 

 great many species in common, probably more than 50 per cent of 

 identities, but their relationships are in reality so distant as to indi- 

 cate plainly that the dispersion has been along thousands of miles of 

 coast lines and during long periods of time, causing most of the ele- 

 ments to evolve en route not only into other species and genera, but 

 even into different families. 



Any paleontologist who reads carefully pages 98 to 106 of Weg- 

 ener's book, dealing with the distribution of the Coal Measures and 

 Glossopter'is floras of Permo-Carboniferous time, will see not only 

 the nimbleness and versatility of his mind, but as well how very 

 easy it is for him to make all facts fit his hypothesis. Why is this? 

 Because he generalizes from the generalizations of others, and com- 

 pares unlike things, regarding the correlation of formations by 

 geologists as dealing with " relatively trifling differences of time " 

 (p. 98). In these pages he is explaining his views of the climate of 

 " Permo-Carboniferous time," and, in doing so, shoves the south pole 

 to a place off the southeast coast of Africa, arranging the equator ac- 

 cordingly.^^ Finally, to make it easy for all of us to get his views, 

 he pictures them on a single diagram ^^ entitled " Evidences of Cli- 

 mate in the Permo-Carboniferous." In this single diagram, he under- 

 takes to represent events that took place during a lapse of something 

 like 50 million years, makes the flora of the tropical Coal Measures 

 fit the " polar " Glossopteris flora of the much younger Permian, and 

 in order that the latter may be truly polar assumes that it was tree- 

 less,-" says that Antarctis then Avas adjacent to southeastern Africa 

 with the south pole at the edge of it, and on this basis arranges the 

 climatic belts around it (fig. 3) ! 



The Glossopteris land flora occurs not only in India, Africa, and 

 very widely in South America, but also in the Falklands, Antarctica, 

 and widely in Australia.^^ Paleobotanists are not all agreed as to 



'^ Gerth, who has studied the corals of the Permian of Timor in the Dutch East Indies, 

 says that they are of warm waters, and tliis conclusion is also borne out by the associated 

 species, which together make up the largest known Permian fauna, of about 600 species. 

 Such a fauna could not have lived beyond 30° south latitude, and on Wegener's projection 

 of the Permian it would have occurred at about 45° south latitude. As Gerth says, the 

 Timor Permian fauna alone proves that the South Pole could not have been where Wegener 

 places It. See H. Gerth, Die Korallenfauna des Perm von Timor uud die Permische 

 Vereisung, Leid. Geol. Meded., 1926, pp. 7-14. 



i»A. Wegener, op. cit., p. 100. 



'"Gothan in 1911 pointed out that the fossil woods of Australia and Falkland have 

 annual rings. 



=^ For an excellent account of the climatic and geographic di.spersion of this flora see 

 David White, Permo-Carboniferous Climatic Chauges in South America, Journ. Geology, vol. 

 15 (1907), pp. 615-633. Tlie Permian problems have recently been discussed by Schuchert 

 at length in his memoir of 1928, referred to on au earlier page. 



