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C. SKOTTSBERG 



must rest on palaeobotanical evidence, and it happens that the fossil records are 

 at variance with current ideas. The occurrence of Araiicaria, Dni/iys, Lmirelia, 

 Nothofagus etc. in Tertiary deposits on Seymour Island would lead us to infer 

 that they are of Antarctic origin and have radiated from there, but Araucaria 

 once had a world-wide distribution, Drimys belongs to an order — Magnoliales — 

 of Holarctic range, the same is true of Fagaceae, and even Lmirelia is, BERRY 

 points out, open to doubt, in spite of the fact that the Monimiaceae are a south- 

 ern family. Many other genera, called Antarctic on the strength of their modern 

 distribution, are known as fossils in the north temperate and Arctic zones. ''Arau- 

 caria stands as a perpetual warning against forgetting that the past is the key 

 to the present", BERRY wrote (I.e. 36). A Holarctic genus may have reached New 

 Zealand or Australia as well as Patagonia from the north, never having used an 

 Antarctic route, and without leaving a trace of its wanderings. On the other hand, 

 the little we know about the preglacial vegetation of Antarctica is sufficient to 

 prove that this large land mass, just as every other part of the globe, was inhab- 

 ited by a rich and varied flora, that it may have been a primary centre of 

 evolution, that, in other instances, it served as a secondary centre and that it was 

 a much-trodden road between America and Australia-Xew Zealand. 



Miss GiBBS appears to have been one of the very few experienced phyto- 

 geographers who refused to regard Antarctica either as a centre or as a migra- 

 tion route over land; it had always been surrounded on all sides by water and 

 no other agents than "the wild west wind" [106. 103) and a pole-ward north-west 

 wind, coming from x'\sia, were needed to explain every distribution pattern. The 

 southern focus of development was not Antarctica but the mountains of New 

 Guinea. The highland of Tasmania, the subject of her survey, had received 

 nothing from the south, all the so-called Antarctic plants, genera lika Abroianella, 

 Astelia, Carpha, Co/oba^iiJuis, Coprosma, Driuiys, Gaimardia, Gunnera, Lageno- 

 pliora, Nothofagits, Oreobolus and so on, had come from New Guinea, and from 

 there they had radiated to Polynesia, Hawaii, Juan Fernandez, Tierra del Fuego 

 and, I presume, Antarctica. Had she lived to hear of the discovery of Nothofagus 

 in New Guinea, where more species have been found than anywhere else, and 

 in New Caledonia, and of the rich development of the Winteraceae in New Guinea, 

 she would have regarded such finds as a forcible proof of the correctness of her 

 opinion. 



Many zoogeographers have looked with much suspicion at the Antarctic 

 continent as a centre of radiation. Simpson, in his review of the theories involving 

 Antarctica in the distribution of vertebrates {22J), concluded that dispersal had 

 been, in all cases, from north to south; not even the Scotia Arc had ever been 

 used as a route of migration. His reasoning is logical and often conclusive. The 

 invertebrates are, however, left aside. To quote part of his summary (p. 767): 



There is no known biotic fact that demands an Antarctic land-migration route for 

 its explanation and there is none that it more simply explained by that hypothesis 

 than by any other. The affinities of the southern faunas as a whole are w'hat would 

 be expected from the present northern connection known, or with considerably prob- 

 ability inferred, to have existed at appropriate times in the past. There are certain 



