312 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS : PAL/EONTOLOGY. 



This opinion is the more remarkable, since it was first expressed at a time 

 (Hooker, 1847, P- 2II )> wnen Darwin's "Origin of Species" had not yet 

 been published. Although Hooker hints at this possibility very cau- 

 tiously, he returns to this point in 1853 (p. xxiii ff.) more emphatically, 

 and again in 1859 (pp. xvii and civ), and in this case from a Darwinian 

 point of view (he refers here to Darwin's unprinted "Origin of Species"). 

 His general idea was, that the southern floras indicate one great vegeta- 

 tion, which may once have covered a larger southern area of land; but 

 he leaves it uncertain where was the position of this southern continent, 

 especially he does not connect it with the polar lands of the southern 

 hemisphere. Some of his remarks even indicate that he was in favor of 

 placing this land connection in lower latitudes (about that of Tierra del 

 Fuego and Kerguelen Islands). 



Among zoologists this theory of former connections of the southern 

 lands was not taken up, until Ruetimeyer (1867, pp. 15 and 23) but 

 without reference to Hooker expressed the opinion that the Antarctic 

 continent is to be regarded as a center of a separate development of a 

 certain stock of animals, from which the inhabitants spread northward, 

 and that we should regard the faunal elements common to Australia, 

 South America and South Africa as remnants of this Antarctic fauna. He 

 expresses no opinion on the probable extent and configuration of this 

 southern center, but only says that the assumption of a connection of the 

 three southern land masses with the Antarctic continent would explain 

 many facts of present distribution. 



The next to discuss this question was Hutton (1873 and 1874). He 

 has practically the same idea as Ruetimeyer, and assumes a former greater 

 extension of land in the southern hemisphere, South America, New Zea- 

 land, Australia and South Africa were connected by a continent, which in 

 its largest extension existed at the beginning of Cretaceous times, but 

 which was not necessarily a single, completely continuous mass at one 

 and the same time. 



Accepting Wallace's opinion (1876) mentioned above, Hutton subse- 

 quently changed this view (1884), and abandoned the connections of these 

 regions by an extension of the Antarctic continent, especially he no longer 

 believes that South Africa had a connection with it. But he still main- 

 tains that there was a land connection between Australia and South 

 America, and he constructs this bridge across the middle part of the Pa- 



