RANGE BASE OR REFUGE AREAS 53 



its expansion north are a facsimile ol those phenomena 

 that preceded them. 



I may say in conclusion that so far as I have been able 

 to ascertain, many of the views expressed in the present 

 chapter are entirely new. I maintain that the immediate 

 Pre-Glacial dominant fauna (including Aves) and flora of 

 temperate Euro-Asia were never very closely associated 

 with Africa, or with Australia ; probably nothing nearly 

 so much as were the immediate Pre-Glacial fauna and 

 flora of North America with those of South America. 

 Professor Geikie writes : "The European flora of to-day 

 differs so much more from that of Pliocene and Miocene 

 times, than the flora of North America does from the 

 plant life of those periods. In the latter continent there 

 existed a continuous passage to the south across which 

 plants and animals alike could make good their retreat." 

 Now to my mind this very conclusively proves that the 

 line of Antarctic connection is most dominant along the 

 American continents, and that the floras were more 

 continuous than in the Old W'orld. Unfortunately, 

 Professor Geikie (to whom this Law forbidding southern 

 dispersal or emigration was unknown) makes this con- 

 tinuous land mass a proof of Southern Emigration rather 

 than a contraction of range. The Law that forbids 

 southern dispersal in the Northern Hemisphere prevented 

 a southern emigration of all the purely Euro-Asian 

 species, and consequently the Glacial Epoch nearly exter- 

 minated that fauna and flora. Hence the abundance 

 of its palreontological remains bears eloquent testimony 

 to the helplessness of such animals to escape from their 

 glacial doom. A few relics only survive whose range 

 then extended right across that region from north to 



