100 president's address — SECTION c. 



H. E. Gregory (verbal citation). The relationship of thesei to the 

 adjacent marine Tertiary rocks has not yet been fully considered. 

 At Kyeburn, however, in the northern part cf Central Otago, 

 fossiliferO'Us greensands, deposited in a temporary extension of, the 

 Oamaruian sea, have been noted by McKay (1883, 1894), and 

 these occur intercalated in the lower part of the terrestrial fonna- 

 t-ions. The latter have yielded fresh-water mussels, and fish- 

 remains, together with numerous dicotyledons. At Lawrence, 

 Marshall determined certain plant remains as belonging to Aralia 

 and Podocarpivm. 



The Affinities of the Fossil Fauna and Flora of New Zealand. 



It is not possible in this place to discuss in any detail the 

 affinities of the ancient life in New Zealand to that in other 

 parts of the world, but in view of the urgent problems of th© origin 

 of the modern fauna and flora, some mention must ba made of the 

 facts that have been brought to light during the past decade. Of 

 the Ordovician and Silurian life we know but little, but, so far 

 as our information goes, there is a general similarity betweein 

 the New Zealand forms and those of South-Eastem Australia. The 

 record becomes more legible at the close of the Palaeozoic period. The 

 hypothesis of the former existence of an Antarctic continent with 

 land-connexions to Australasia and South America, first suggested 

 by Hooker (1847), has received support, from many lines of evi- 

 dence adduced by a large group of naturalists, including four 

 former presidents in this Association — Benham, Hedley, Hutton 

 and Spencer — until, in the words of Osbom (1910), " the hypo- 

 thetical reconstruction of a great Southern Continent is one of the 

 greatest triumphs of recent biological research." The evidencie 

 has baen as yet. for the most part, based upon the characters and 

 distribution of the modern forms only. The particular form of the 

 hypothesis most generallv supported appears to be that suggested 

 by Hedley (1895, 1899!! 1912). Generalizing from the several 

 statements, we may say that the hypothesis involves ccmmunica- 

 tion between New Zealand, Australia and Malaysia in Mesozoic 

 times, with a separation of New Zealand from Australia in the 

 latter part of the Cretaceous period, when the former was in close 

 association with Antarctica, permitting migration to New Zealand 

 of South American forms. This was probably the period of 

 greatest extension of the Antarctic lands, as was urged by Hutton 

 (1873), though the geographic significance we now put on that 

 stateanent when following Hedley, is different from that assigned 

 to it by Hutton. Hedley (1895) stated that " during the Mesozoic 

 or Older Tertiary, a strip of land with a mild climate extended 

 across the South Pole from Tasmania to Tierra del Fuego, and 

 Tertiary New Zealand then reached sufficiently near to this An- 

 tarctic connexion without joining it, to receive by flight or drift 

 many plaaits and animals ". Antarctica was " not necessarily a 



