PEESIDENTIAL ADDRESS — SECTION E. 243 



■seven iu New Zealand, and four in South Africa (Hutton's 

 "Origin of New Zealand Flora and Fauna"). Temperate 

 South America has seventy-four genera of plants in common 

 with New Zealand, and eleven of its species are identical 

 (Wallace's "Island Life"). Penguins of the genus Eudyptcs are 

 common to South America and Australia (Wallace : " Distribu- 

 tion of Animals," vol. i., p. 399). Three groups of fresh- water 

 fishes are entirely confined to these two regions. Apliritls, a 

 fresh- water genus, has one species in Tasmania and two in 

 Patagonia. Another small group of fishes known as the Haplo- 

 chitonidas inhabit Tierra del Fuego, the Falklands, and South 

 x\ustralia, and are not found elsewhere ; while the genus Galaxias 

 is confined to south temperate America, New Zealand, and 

 x\ustralia. Yet the lands which have these plants and animals 

 in common are so widely separated from each other that 

 they could not now possibly interchange their inhabitants. 

 Certainly towards the equator they approach each other rather 

 more, but even this fact fails to account for the present distri- 

 bution, for, as Wallace has pointed out, "the heat-loving 

 Eeptilia afford hardly any indications of close afiinity between 

 the two regions" of South America and Australia, "whilst 

 the cold-enduring amphibia and fresh-vv'ater fishes offer them 

 in abundance " (Wallace : " Distribution of Animals," vol. i., 

 p. 400) . Thus we see that to the north interchange is prohibited 

 by tropical heat, while it is barred to the south by a nearly 

 shoreless circumpolar sea. Yet there must have been some 

 means of intercommunication in the past, and it appears cer- 

 tain that it took the shape of a common fatherland for the 

 various common forms from which they spread to the Northern 

 Hemisphere. As this fatherland must have been accessible 

 from all these scattered southern lands, its size and its dis- 

 position must have been such as would serve the emigrants 

 either as a bridge or as a series of stepping-stones. It must 

 have been either a continent or an archipelago. 



But a further and a peculiar interest attaches to this lost 

 continent. Those who have any acquaintance with geology 

 know that the placental Mammalia — that is, animals which are 

 classed with such higher forms of life as apes, cats, dogs, bears, 

 horses, and oxen — appear very abruptly with the incoming of 

 the Tertiary period. Now, judging by analogy, it is not likely 

 that these creatures can have been developed out of Mesozoic 

 forms with anything like the suddenness of their apparent 

 entrance upon the scene. For such changes they must have 

 required a long time and an extensive region of the earth, and 

 it is probable that each of them had a lengthy series of progeni- 

 tors, which ultimately linked it back to lower forms. 



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

 ■of creation, do these missing links never turn up ? In reply 



