272 



C. SKOTTSBERG 



Before quoting some other authors who liave paid special attention to the 

 Antarctic problems I want to add a few remarks on the relations between the far 

 South and South America-Juan Fernandez. The Antarctic flora invaded the Amer- 

 ican continent, advancing especially along the rising Andes and in some cases 

 extending north of the Equator. It must have been a climatically diversified flora, 

 for the great southern continent must have had coast and inland, lowland and 

 mountain climates, and consequently the Antarctic plants in S. America have 

 varying claims on moisture and heat. The less exacting plants are concentrated 

 in West Patagonia, F"uegia and the Falkland Is., rising higher and higher as they 

 advance north along the Cordillera, whereas such as require more favourable tem- 

 perature conditions are found farther north in S. Chile and in the montane region 

 of the tropical Andes. Father Rambo, a wellknown expert on the flora of S. Brazil, 

 called my attention (letter of Nov. 30, 1953) to an Antarctic element in the high- 

 lands of Rio Grande do Sul, where such genera as Acaeno, Margyricarptis, Es- 

 callonia, Gtomera, Dyimys2s\A Phiygila}ithtcs dixe represented; in 202. 30 he mentions 

 Araucaria angustifolia, Podocarpus Lanibcrti, Drhnys Winter i, Acaena fuscescens. 

 Fuchsia regia, Gumiera manicata, and Griseliiiia ruscifolia, elements which, in his 

 opinion, constitute the last remnants of the old flora that inhabited the southern 

 lands united until early Tertiary times. 



Hill [134] was cautious in his judgment of the importance of Antarctica in 

 the history of the plant world. He quotes Seward who had pointed out that a 

 number of families now largely in the South Hemisphere were present in the Xorth 

 Hemisphere already in Mesozoic times and that this would lead us to derive them 

 from there, which most likely is true in certain cases. He also refers to Smuts, 

 who looked at the "ancient lands of the Southern Hemisphere" as the cradle of 

 the peculiar S. African flora, and Hill formulates the following question (p. 1497): 



Did the angiosperms originate in the north and migrate southwards and then, having 

 reached the souths, evolve along special lines in lands comparatively isolated from the 

 land masses in the north, or did certain groups first appear in the South Hemisphere 

 in an ancient Antarctic Continent and become dispersed northward into our present- 

 day New Zealand, Australia, South America and South Africa? 



With regard to Juan Fernandez he finds that 



the present flora suggests that at one time these islands formed part of the Antarctic 

 continent or were united to the extreme south of Chile, a view which is shared *by 

 Jhering and Joly, who believe that such a connection may have existed in early Ter- 

 tiary times and that Kerguelen Island was probably part of a large land mass at the 

 same period . . . 



and he continues: 



It seems also likely, on geological evidence, that Antarctica extended in the Ter- 

 tiary epoch towards Tasmania and Australia, and so to Asia, and towards New Zea- 

 land, and the distribution of certain present-day plants in the Australasian region lends 

 considerable support to such an extension (p. 1479). 



Nevertheless, the problem is not as simple as it might seem to be: 



