118 Mr. C. Hedley on Surviving Befagees 



Africa had already been joined to and broken from It, 

 receiving a colony thence or leaving one there to mix with 

 American and Australian forms when the vicissitudes of 

 continental growth permitted. 



In an inquiry * into the distribution of the pond-snail, 

 Gundlachia, I lately proposed, as the simplest solution of the 

 problem, that during the Mesozoic OR Older Tertiary, a 

 strip of land with a mild climate extended across the 

 South Pole from Tasmania to Tierra del Fuego, and 



THAT '1'ERTIARY NeW ZeALAND THEN REACHED SUFFICIENTLY 

 NEAR TO THIS ANTARCTIC LAND, WITHOUT JOINING IT, TO 

 RECEIVE BY FLIGHT OR DRIFT MANY PLANTS AND ANIMALS, aS 

 the Galapagos received their population from America or the 

 Azores theirs from Europe. 



This conclusion was built upon the following evidence. A 

 minimum of land-extension compared with that asked for by 

 Hutton or Forbes was demanded. A milder climate is ad- 

 mitted by geologists, even by those who dispute its cause, to 

 have formerly prevailed in Arctic regions : a mild Antarctic 

 climate should therefore be admissible. Dr. Murray remarks f 

 of the fossils collected by Capt. Jensen close to the Antarctic 

 Circle that they " are probably of a Lower Tertiary age, and 

 they indicate a warmer temperature than now prevails in these 

 high southern latitudes." A cursory survey of a collection 

 of Eocene Mollusca from the Muddy Creek beds of Victoria 

 suggests to me that warmer seas then prevailed. Its wealtli 

 of Cyproia and Valuta points to a tropical climate. I observe 

 there tubes of Kvphus, a genus now ranging from Sumatra to 

 the Solomons, whose evidence is corroborated by extinct 

 allies of Nautilus. That New Zealand once extended very 

 far south of its present position to or, perhaps, beyond the 

 Macquarie Islands, is granted by all who have investigated 

 the subject J. Possibly this southward extension was syn- 

 chronous with the northward extension indicated § by the 

 range of Plocostylus. That this southward extension ot New 

 Zealand did not, during the marsupial exodus, actually touch 

 the highway between Tasmania and South America, I infer 

 from the fact that such passengers as the venomous snakes, 

 extinct Palimvarchus, cystignathous frogs, monotremes, and 

 marsupials failed to arrive in Ntw Zealand. The southward 



* Pvoc. Linn. Soc. N. S. W. (2) Tiii. p. 508. 



t " Notes on an important Geographical Discovery in the Antarctic 

 Kegions," Scottif'h Gecigraphical Magazine, vol. x. p. 196. 

 X Vide Blancbard, ' Con.ptes Rendus,' 1882, p. 386. 

 § Proc, Linn, Soc. ^^ S. W, (2) vii, p 38.5. 



