Signs of an Ancient Southern Continent 247 



Crookes mentioned some recent experiments by Victor 

 Schumann, of Leipzig, on the photography of rays of very 

 high refrangibility. Having found that the short length 

 of air, through which the light has to pass from the electric 

 spark to the spectroscope, has a very decided absorptive 

 action on those rays, he had constructed a spectroscope 

 from which the air can be exhausted. Mr. Crookes showed 

 a photograph of a certain part of the hydrogen spectrum, 

 exhibiting more than 300 lines and representing about 

 one-eighth of the whole hydrogen spectrum, which contains 

 irom 1500 to 2000 lines. 



May i6th, 432nd meeting. Mr. Blanford spoke of a fossil 

 flora, information of which had recently come to him from 

 the province of San Luis, Argentina. It was remarkably 

 interesting, because a series of fossil floras had now been 

 found in Australia, India, and South Africa, ranging in age 

 from Carboniferous to Jurassic or Neocomian, the older of 

 which were quite different from the Carboniferous and 

 Permian floras of Europe and North America, and so much 

 resembled those of Mesozoic age, that the Australian and 

 Indian coal-beds had for long been considered Jurassic, but 

 the higher Indian, Australian, and South African floras did 

 not differ so much from those in the north. Dr. Kurtz had 

 now found, in Argentina, a small number of plants identical 

 with those in the Karharbari and Talchir beds of India, 

 the Ecca-Kimberley beds of South Africa, and some of the 

 lower Newcastle beds of Australia, thus indicating that a 

 more or less connected tract of land, comprising parts of 

 India, Australia, South Africa, and South America must 

 once have existed, which, however, was separated by a 

 break, impassable by plants, from that occupied by the flora 

 of North America and Europe. Another interesting matter 

 was that, in each of the first-named four countries, traces of 

 glaciation have been observed in connection with the beds 

 containing the Upper Palaeozoic flora. 1 



1 Sometimes referred to as the " Glossopteris flora," and considered 

 to be of Penno-Carboniferous age. This and the signs of glaciation are 

 mentioned in Sir A. Geikie's Text-book of Geology, pages 1057, 1066, etc. 



