104 president's address — SECTION c. 



of the ancestry and migrations of other organisms in New Zea- 

 land — the moa, the reptilia, and amphibians — must also be con- 

 sidered in this connexion before conclusions are reached. There 

 is certainly no palasontological evidence yet for the connexion of 

 New Zealand at this time with New Caledonia, for the Tertiary 

 beds there are represented only by estuarine deposits containing 

 a few foraminifera, and even these are not of the types that are 

 represented in ccntemporaneo' s marine beds in New Zealand. 



There is, however, no divergence of opinion in regard to the 

 isolation of New Zealand since the middle of Tertiary times. 

 Thus Thomson (1908) states:— "The Recent New Zealand 

 (brachiopod) fauna is merely a diminished remnant of the rich 

 Oamaruian (' Miocene ') fauna, and needs no land connexions, 

 since the Miocene, to explain its character. The specific and 

 generic distinctness of the Recent New Zealand and Australian 

 forms precludes a land connexion between the areas in the Plio- 

 cene or post-Pliocene." Marshall and Murdoch (1920) concur, 

 stating that the present molluscan fauna of New Zealand seems 

 to be a remnant of a fauna of early, or middle, Tertiary age. 

 There is certainly a striking poverty of mollusca in the Wanganui 

 (" Pliocene ") beds when they are compared with the very small 

 exposure of fossiliferous strata at Target Gully, near Oamaru 

 (Awamoan) and elsewhere in the middle Tertiary strata. There 

 are no additional genera of any importance in the Castlecliff 

 ("Upper Pliocene") strata, and thee is no sudden inrueh of 

 new species, so far as their investigations go, at any horizon of 

 the "complete succession of 'Pliocene' beds near Wanganui." 

 This seems to preclude the possibility of the formation of a tempo- 

 rary association of lands during the late Tertiary and Pleistocene 

 erogenic and epirogenic movements in New Caledonia, New Zea- 

 land, and Eastern Australia, to which Cockayne (1919) seems to 

 be inclined to ascribe the entry of a presumably post-Mesozoic 

 floral element into New Zealand. 



In view of the uncertainty attaching to the present records of 

 the Tertiary flora, which are due to Ettingshausen (1891). we 

 cannot profitably base on them any discussion of the relationships 

 of the recent and fossil flora. Hutton's (1904) comments thereon 

 may be noted, and we may endorse Cockayne's (1919) remark 

 that "it is to be sincerely hoped that some one well versed in the 

 flora of New Zealand will thoroughly study these fossils. No 

 purely scientific work is more wanted." Fortunately, however, we 

 are not without evidence of the affinities of the present flora. 

 Dusen (1908) has recorded the presence O'f fo'Ur w^ell-known genera 

 among the Recent flora of New Zealand in the Tertiary plant beds 

 of Seymour Island, Grahamsland. Skottsberg (1915) has com- 

 pared the Recent floras of New Zealand and sub-Antarctic 

 America, and finds that there are 47 families, 68 genera, and a 

 score of species common to the two regions, while a score more of 



