INTRODUCTION 75 



Antarctica, Australia and South America 



One of the greatest triumphs of recent biological investigation is the hypo- 

 thetical reconstruction of a great southern continent, to which the name 

 Antarctica has been given, through the concurrence of evidence derived from 

 botany, zoology, and palaeontology. This tends to support the bipolar 

 theory. 



In 1847 the British Ijotanist Sir Joseph Hooker first advocated the view 

 that there had been a larger and more continuous tract of land than now 

 exists in the Antarctic Ocean, to explain the distribution of flowering plants, 

 which show the same resemblances as the animals, many plants of Chili, 

 Patagonia, Tasmania, and New Zealand being allied. He did not assign any 

 geological date whatever to his Antarctic land. In 1867 the Swiss paheontol- 

 ogist Riitimeyer published his remarkable zoogeographical sketch entitled 

 Uber die Herkunft unserer Thierwelt} 



He says (pp. 13-15) : 



" From the study of modern distribution and particularly of island life, we 

 arrive at the conclusion that all parts of the earth, no matter how isolated, have 

 received their animal inhabitants from a few faunal centers. Aside from the large 

 connected land masses north of the equator, we need to assume only tliree such 

 centers for the warm-blooded animals of both hemispheres: Australia for the mar- 

 supials, Madagascar for the makis, and the islands of the Indian Ocean from New 

 Zealand to Madagascar for the wingless birds. In reality these three centers are 

 one, since their fauna represents the remnants of the animal life of a large Antarctic 

 continent, since covered by the sea and by an impenetrable ice-sheet. The presence 

 of marsupials and of ostriches in America and of penguins on both sides of the great 

 body of water that divides the continents from the South Polar regions, are evidence 

 in favor of such an assumption." Besides this Antarctic faunal center Riitimeyer 

 also believed in an Arctic or northern faunal center (p. 65). 



In 1870 Huxley,- in his anniversary address before the Geological Society 

 of London, said that the simplest and most rational way of accounting for the 

 various differences and similitudes of the life of southern lands is on the sup- 

 position that a South Pacific continent existed during the Age of Reptiles 

 which connected Australia, New Zealand, and South America, and then 

 gradually subsided, Australia being the first land to be cut off from the con- 

 nection and thus receiving only the lower types of mammals, or marsupials. 

 This took the form of a supposed South Atlantic rather than South Pacific 

 land bridge. In 1893 H. O. Forbes^ revived Hooker's theory of a southern 

 or Antarctic continent, and considered that it existed until very late times 

 geologically, that is, until the Pliocene. He even proposed to connect this 



' For full reference see Bibliography. 



^ Huxley, Anniversary Address of the President, 1870. Collected Memoirs, Vol. Ill, p. 548. 



* Forbes, H. O., The Chatham Islands; their Relation to a Former Southern Continent. 

 Roy. Geog. Soc, Suppl., Vol. Ill, 1893; and, Antarctica, a Supposed Former Southern Conti- 

 nent. Nat. Sci., Vol. Ill, 1893. 



