124 president's address — section d. 



Nearctic on the other. Wallace's idea of a southern migra- 

 tion from the temperate regions of Australia seems to be 

 negatived by the fact that the parts into which they must 

 have passed, viz., New Zealand and South-Eastern Australia 

 with Tasmania are very poor, especially the former, in repre- 

 sentatives of the family. It is, of course, possible that they 

 may have undergone gradual extinction in these parts. 



Professor Hutton, as before said, dates the S. Pacific 

 continent as not earlier than the Jurassic nor later than the 

 Eocene period. If, allowing of course considerable limits of 

 time, there existed anywhere within or about this period a 

 direct land connection between S. America, New Zealand 

 and Australia the difficulty would appear to be not to explain 

 the amount of affinity which does exist but the lack of much 

 greater affinity which does not exist. 



At the present time, whilst fully acknowledging the 

 difficulties and granting that there may once have been a 

 considerably larger land surface in the Pacific than now 

 exists, it seems safer to conclude that there has not existed a 

 direct land connection between S. America and the Aus- 

 tralasian region, and that the affinities between these two 

 regions have been brought about mainly by migrations south- 

 wards across the Eurasian continent in the Old World and 

 the American in the New and partly, though to a much less 

 extent, by migrations across Antarctic lands. 



