MACLOSKIE: CHARACTER AND ORIGIN OF PATAGONIAN FLORA. 953 



the other side, are not of the Asiatic or Northern fades ; and seem to be 

 essentially and primitively Austral ; such are some of the Coniferce, the 

 Chilian- Australian beeches (Nothofagus], peculiar Liliacece, Centrolepidacece, 

 Proteacece (of this family, however, the Patagonian forms make a special 

 section, reminding one of the case of the Marsupials) ; Calandrinia, Colo- 

 bantlms, Weinmannia (its woolly seeds are supposed to indicate aeronautic 

 propensities), Discaria, Plagianthus, Drapetes, Nertera, Plantaginella, Vit- 

 tadmia, Chiliotriclmim, and species of the Mutisiece. 



One difficulty as to these is to explain how they could reach Patagonia 

 from Australasian sources; the winds and waves could "run the easting 

 down " as seamen say, so as to carry Patagonian forms eastwards; " sed 

 revocare gradum " is still an open problem. Whether the fragments of a 

 lost continent in the Antarctic banks and islets are to be a leading factor 

 in explicating this problem we cannot presently say. It is, of course, for 

 many reasons probable, that the migration of some of the special forms 

 of plants as well as of the diprotodont marsupial animals must have been 

 westward toward America from their place of origin somewhere in Aus- 

 tralasia; the share of New Zealand in helping migration may be con- 

 siderable and all the more because the scattered Polynesian islands of lower 

 latitudes seem to have little in common with Patagonian vegetation. 

 Ever since Commerson's time the Magellan coast and the Falklands have 

 been recognized as a sort of dumping ground for odds and ends of vege- 

 tation from all parts, much of it imported in straw and barrels from north- 

 ern sources. Yet even prior to the advent of man it seems to have been 

 subject to much accession of an extraordinary kind from other quarters ; 

 and the facts are there still ready to tell their history if we can only read 

 them aright. The most important of these facts seem to belong to the 

 geological history and palaeontology of the Southern Hemisphere. In 

 numerous cases, as was shown by J. D. Hooker before the British Asso- 

 ciation in 1866, the colonization was probably eastwards, from Fuegia to 

 Kerguelen and directly to Australia. The large majority of Kerguelen 

 Phanerogams were stated by him to have been immigrants from Southern 

 America. 



A slight acquaintance with the vegetation of the region suffices to show 

 that it is derived mainly from the Chilian Flora, and in a less degree from 

 that of Argentina, and that it also has very interesting though vastly 

 fewer relations with the insular vegetation of the southern hemisphere, as 



