of Ancient Antarctic Life. 115 



haustive data monographs of most groups of animals and 

 plants of these countries may be consulted*. 



We may compare the shattered biological monuments of 

 Tasmania and South America to the broken columns found by 

 Oriental travellers in the ruined and deserted cities of a 

 vanished civilization ; and as an archseologist may restore 

 from such fragments the fallen temples or disused aqueducts, 

 so may a naturalist trace the missing arches of life that once 

 spanned the gap. Some of the efforts to do so may be here 

 reviewed. 



Prof. Hutton has conjectured f that such a bridge spanned 

 the South Pacific from Chili to Samoa, and thence to New- 

 Zealand. Claiming South-American relations for the New- 

 Zealand fauna and flora, he accounts for their entry into New 

 Zealand by this assumed bridge. Against Prof. Hutton's 

 arguments it may be urged that, though the relation of New 

 Zealand to South America is indisputable, it is less than 

 between the latter and Tasmania, and that the demand for a 

 former union may be satisfied by supposing an approach but 

 not a connexion with Antarctica. The sole supports of the 

 theoretical transpacific bridge are the difficulties it is believed 

 to explain. A biologist might object that, had such a bridge 

 existed, New Zealand being at the furthest extremity, ought to 

 contain fewer South- American affinities than do intermediate 

 Polynesian islands, like Samoa or Tahiti, lying nearer to the 

 source. On the contrary, these islands are devoid of such. 

 And a geologist might say that this supposed bridge was 

 discordant with the main orographic structure of the region. 



* For fungi see Darwin, Voy. ' Beagle,' p. 236 ; mosses, Mueller, Trans. 

 N. Z. Inst. xxv. p. 428 ; grasses, Buchanan, ' Indigenous Grasses of New- 

 Zealand ; ' trees, Kirk, 'The Forest Flora of New Zealand;' lichens, 

 Shirley, Proc. Roy. Soc. Queensland, vol. x. p. 54 ; earthworms, Beddard, 

 'A Text-book of Zoogeography,' p. 60; isopods, the same, p. 173; cray- 

 fish, Parker, N. Z. Inst. xix. p. 154 ; fiuviatile mollusca, Hedley, P. L. S. 

 N. S. W. (2) viii. p. 507, and ix. p. 464 ; trematodes, Haswell, ' A Mono- 

 graph of the Temnocephalse,' Macleay Memorial Volume ; ants, Emery, 

 1 Nature,' Aug. 22, 1895, p. 400; planarians, Bendy, Trans. New Zealand 

 Inst. 1895, p. 177 ; diptera, Skuse, Proc. Austr. Assoc. Adv. Science, i. 

 pp. 526-540, and Osten Sacken, Berliner entomolog-. Zeit. Bd. xxx. 1886, 

 Heft ii. pp. 153-187 ; lepidoptera, Meyrick, various papers, Trans. New 

 Zealand Institute. Mr. Skuse has drawn my attention to the interesting 

 South-American and Australian distribution of Stigmodera and other 

 genera grouped around it, as enumerated in Gemminger and Harold's 

 ' Catalogus Coleopterorum,' tome v. pp. 1392-1405. When defects in 

 the current classification of invertebrates are amended, the likeness 

 between southern faunas will grow more apparent. 



t "On the Origin of the Fauna and Flora of New Zealand,'' New 

 Zealand Journal of Science, ii. pp. 1-249; and Ann. & Wag. Nat. Hist. 

 (5) xiii. p. 426. 



8* 



