INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xxi 
where), there were such peculiarities in the plants so circumstanced, as rendered many of them 
the least likely of all to have availed themselves of what possible chances of transport there may 
have been. As species they were either not so abundant in individuals, or not prolific enough to have 
been the first to offer themselves for chance transport, or their seeds presented no facilities for migra- 
tion*, or were singularly perishable from feeble vitality, soft or brittle integuments, the presence 
of oil that soon became rancid, or from having a fleshy albumen that quickly decayedt. Added 
to the fact that of all the plants in the respective floras of the Antarctic islands; those common to 
any two of them were the most unlikely of all to emigrate, and that there were plenty of species 
possessing unusual facilities, which had not availed themselves of them, there was another important 
point, namely, the little chance there was of the seeds growing at all, after transport. Though 
thousands of seeds are annually shed in those bleak regions, few indeed vegetate, and of these fewer 
still arrive at maturity. There is no annual plant in Kerguelen's Land, and seedlings are extremely 
rare there; the seeds, if not eaten by birds, either rot on the ground or are washed away; and the 
conclusion is evident, that if such mortality attends them in their own island, the chances must be 
small indeed for a solitary individual, after being transported perhaps thousands of miles, to some 
spot where the available soil is pre-occupied. 
Beyond the bare fact of the difficulty of accounting by any other means for the presence of the 
same species in two of the islands, there appeared nothing in the botany of the Antarctie regions to 
support or even to favour the assumption of a double creation, and I hence dismissed it as a mere 
speculation which, till it gained some support on philosophical principles, could only be regarded as 
shelving a difficulty ; whilst the unstable doctrine that would account for the creation of each species 
on each island by progressive development on the spot, was contradicted by every fact. 
It was with these conclusions before me, that I was led to speculate on the possibility of the 
plants of the Southern Ocean being the remains of a flora that had once spread over a larger and 
more continuous tract of land than now exists in that ocean; and that the peculiar Antarctic genera 
and species may be the vestiges of a flora characterized by the predominance of plants which are 
now scattered throughout the southern islands. An allusion to these speculations was made in the 
‘Flora Antarctica’ (pp. 210 and 368), where some circumstances connected with the distribution of the 
Antarctic islands were dwelt upon, and their resemblance to the summits of a submerged moun- 
tain chain was pointed out; but beyond the facts that the general features of the flora favoured such 
a view, that the difficulties in the way of transport appeared to admit of no other solution, and that 
there are no limits assignable to the age of the species that would make their creation posterior to 
such a series of geological changes as should remove the intervening land, there was nothing in 
the shape of evidence by which my speculation could be supported. I am indebted to the invaluable 
labours of Lyell and Darwinf, for the facts that could alone have given countenance to such 
an hypothesis; the one showing that the necessary time and elevations and depressions of land 
* Thus of the Composite, common to Lord Auckland's Group, Fuegia, and Kerguelen's Land, none have any 
pappus (or sced-down) at all! Of the many species with pappus, none are common to two of these islands ! 
+ Of the seeds sent to England from the Antarctic regions, or transported by myself between the several islands, 
almost all perished during transmission. 
i See Darwin’s “Journal of a Naturalist,’ and ‘ Essays on Volcanic Islands and Coral Islands.” The proofs of 
the coasts of Chili and Patagonia having been raised continuously, for several hundred miles, to elevations varying 
between 400 and 1300 feet, since the period of the creation of existing shells, will be found in the first-named of 
these admirable works, which should be in the hands of every New Zealand Naturalist, if only from its containing 
