298 ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION. 



entrance upon tlie scene. For such changes they must have rcijuired 

 a long time, and an extensive region of the earth, and it is probable 

 that each of them had a lengthy series of progenitors, which ultimately 

 linked it back to lower forms. 



Why, then, it is constantly asked, if this was the sequence of crea- 

 tion, do these missing links never turn up? In reply to this (piery, it 

 was suggested by Huxley that they may have been developed in some 

 lost continent, the boundaries of which were gradually shifted by the 

 slow elevation of the sea margin on one side and its simultaneous slow 

 depression upon the other, so that there has always been in existence 

 a large dry area with its live stock. This dry spot, with its fauna and 

 flora, like a great raft or Noah's Ark, moved with great slowness in 

 whatever direction the great earth-undulatiou travelled. But to-day 

 this area, with its fossil evidences, is a sea-bottom; and Huxley sup- 

 poses that the continent, which once occupied a part of the Pacific 

 Ocean, is now represented b}" Asia. 



This movement of land-surface translation eastwards eventually 

 created a connection between this land and xVfrica and Europe, and if 

 when this hai^pened the mammalia spread rapidly over these countries, 

 this circumstance would account for the abruptness of their appear- 

 ance there. 



Now, Mr. Blauford, the president of the Geological Society of London, 

 in his annual address, recently delivered, advances matters a stage 

 further, for he tells us that a growing acquaintance with the biology <tf 

 the world leads naturalists to a belief that the placental mammalia and 

 other of the higher forms of terrestrial life originated during the Meso- 

 zoic period still further to the southwards — that is to saj-, in the lost 

 Antarctic continent, for the traces of which we desire to seek. 



But it almost necessarily follows that wherever the mammalia were 

 developed there also man had his birth place, and if these speculations 

 should prove to have been well foumled we may have to shift the loca- 

 tion of the Garden of Eden from the northern to the southern hemis- 

 ]>here. 



I need hardly suggest to you that possibilities such as these must 

 add greatly to our interest in the recovery of any traces of this myste- 

 rious region. This land appears to have sunk beneath the seas after 

 tiie close of the Mesozoic. Now, the submergence of any mass of land 

 will disturb the climatic equilibrium of that re^jion, and the disappear- 

 ance of an Antarctic continent would prove extremely potent in vary- 

 ing the climate of this hemisphere. For to-day the sun's rays fall on 

 the South Polar regions to small purpose. The unstable sea absorbs 

 the heat, and in wide and comparatively warm streams it carries off 

 the caloric to the northern hemisphere to raise its temperature at the 

 ('xi)ense of ours. But when extensive land received those saiiu^ heat 

 rays, its rigid surfaces, so to speak, tethered their caloric in this liemi- 



