THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[SIXTH SERIES.] 

 No. 98. FEBRUARY 1896. 



XIV. — Considerations on the Surviving Refugees in Austral 

 Lands of Ancient Antarctic Life. By C Hedley, F.L.S., 

 Assistant in Zoology to the Australian Museum *. 



To ordinary readers the most desolate region imaginable is 

 that within tlie Arctic Circle. Yet the intrepid explorers who 

 have furthest penetrated into the northern wilds encountered 

 there bears, wolves, musk-oxen, walrus, seals, and other 

 mammals, and saw flocks of birds steering northwards beyond 

 the utmost limit of discovery. 



Infinitely more desolate is the mysterious and perhaps im- 

 penetrable Antarctic continent or archipelago. For aught we 

 know, here may tower loftier mountains than geographers 

 have marked in the Himalayas. From the ship's deck 

 voyagers f have descried volcanic peaks trending into an 

 interior which extends as an unbroken sheet of ice and snow. 

 Beyond the beach its whole surface hardly now nourishes a 

 single animal or plant ; for the lichen reported by Borch- 

 grevink + from Possession Island and Cape Adare alone 



* From an advance proof communicated by the Autlior, liavin? been 

 read before the Royal Society of New South Wales, August 7, 189o. 



t M'Oormick, " A Sketch of the Antarctic Regions, embracing a few 

 Remarks, Geographical and Ornithological," The Tasmanian Journal of 

 Natural Science, i. p. 246. 



X ' The Geographical Journal,' vol. v. Jime 1895, p. 683. 



Ann. (L- Mag. N. Hist. Ser. G. Vol. xvii. 8 



