298 ANTARCTICA: A VANISHED AUSTRAL LAND. 



ilarityiii form and structure render it absolutely certain tliat tliey have 

 bad a common parentage, and tbat, tbougb now living so widely sun- 

 dered from each otber, tbey radiated from one ancestral bome. 



To trace out the migration of the varied forms of life, both animal 

 and vegetable, to their present habitats forms one of the most absorb- 

 ing of zoo-geographical investigations — a "study," as Mr. Wallace well 

 remarks, "which will surely lead - - - to a fuller comprehension 

 of the complex relations and mutual interdependence which link every 

 animal and vegetable form with the ever-changing earth which sup- 

 ports them into one grand organic whole," and which, besides, will 

 enable the investigator to denuirk with increasing certainty, as his 

 labors jn'ogress, the changes in fluctuation of land and water which 

 the globe has from age to age restlessly experienced. As soon as our 

 knowledge of the fauna and flora of the continents and islands of the 

 globe had advanced sufticiently far to enable fairly accurate system- 

 atic catalogues of the animals and plants inhabiting them to be drawn 

 up, many singular anomalies came to light, some of which have been 

 apparently suiflciently explained, while of others the causes are still 

 as inexi)li cable as ever. 



In the year 1801 those distinguished paleontologists. Professors Herr 

 and linger, pointed out that the present vegetation of the Eastern 

 States of America exhibited remarkable resemblances to that which 

 flourished in Europe during the Miocene age, and they suggested the 

 hypothesis that during the Miocene period Euro])e and America were 

 united by a land bridge (long celebrated as the Atlantis continent), 

 which stretched across the Atlantic Ocean. By the perusal of the 

 essay of these botanists, Recherches sur le Climat et la Vegetation du 

 Pays Tertiare, Professor Oliver, of Kew, having been induced to inves- 

 tigate "carefully the relations between the Tertiary and some existing 

 floras," was led to the conclusion that the intercommunity of "types 

 in the Tertiary beds of Europe and the present flora of the eastern 

 States of the North American continent took i)lace, not over an Atlan- 

 tis, but over land j)robably in a comparatively high latitude to the 

 north of the Pacific Ocean" ^ — that is to say, that the flora of Europe 

 followed the climate as, in that epoch, it became more and more genial 

 into the circumpolar regions, and thence it dispersed southward again 

 on the advent of the cold, into such parts of Asia and America as it 

 could obtain foothold in. That a genial climate and a vegetation of 

 very temi)erate character did exist to within nearly 8° of the North 

 Pole, was proved in a most conclusive manner by the officers of the 

 Arctic expedition of 1876, who discovered, in those now ice-bound 

 latitudes, fossil plants which now grow not farther north than mid- 

 Europe. 



Perhaps nothing in natural history surprised naturalists more than 

 the distributional facts — both of the fauna and the flora — first indicated 



1 "Tlie Atlantis hypothesis iu its botanical aspect," The Natural History Review, 

 1862, page 149. 



