418 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. 
are best developed in the south-east, and gradually vanish before reaching the 
Moluccas. Here again the most direct road between the two centres lies across 
Antarctica. By cumulative evidence from plants, both cryptogams and 
phanerogams, from animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate, of many and of 
varied types, we are led to the conclusion that the way they might have gone 
was the way they actually went. 
A problem which geographers seek to solve is—whether there are now one 
or two Antarcticas, and again we may ask whether in the Miocene there was one 
Antarctica or two Antarcticas? If there was only one, why did it not distri- 
bute its faunal contents evenly between Australia and New Zealand? But if 
there were two, or more, did one contribute to the population of New Zealand, 
and another to that of Australia? 
Though the fauna and flora of New Zealand are obviously indebted to 
Tertiary Antarctica, yet New Zealand has not received any of the verte- 
brates mentioned; there are neither monotremes, marsupials, Hylide, nor 
Cystignathide. Further, the differences are positive as well as negative. In 
New Zealand there is a group of earthworms, the Acanthodrilids which recur in 
South America, but not in Tasmania or Australia. The fuchsias, which are 
mostly South American, have a few outliers in New Zealand, but none in Tas- 
mania; the bushy Veronicas are mostly from New Zealand, but there are a few 
in South America, and none in Tasmania. 
The Antarctic constituent in the Australian flora and fauna includes both a 
frigid and a subtropical element. How was it that both these incompatible 
elements could issue from the same source? ‘The answer offered is that then, as 
now, a high plateau existed in central Antarctica, where the frigid forms had 
their station, while the subtropical species existed on the coast. While the 
climate cooled, the land-link between Antarctica and Tasmania endured till 
the alpines in their turn followed the retreat of the subtropical forms 
northwards. 
The conclusions reached from this comparison of southern flora and fauna 
are that: (1) at or about the Miocene a subtropical climate prevailed within 
the Antarctic circle; (2) before, during, or after this warm epoch, land exten- 
sions jutted north from Antarctica to New Zealand, to Patagonia and to Tas- 
mania; (3) southern floras and faunas availed themselves of the opportunities 
for migration offered by these extensions. Relics of these migrations are our 
only evidence of such changes of land and climate. 
Professor A. C. Srwarp gave a brief account, illustrated with lantern 
slides, of some of the fossil plants collected by members of Captain Scott’s 
second expedition, with special reference to Dr. Wilson’s discovery of Glossopteris 
in latitude 85° South. Fragments of well-preserved leaves of Glossopteris indica 
found in the rocks of Buckley Island, a nunatak on the Beardmore glacier, 
afford important evidence both as to the age of the Beacon Sandstone formation 
and as to a former connection between Antarctica and Gondwana Land. The 
geological distribution of Glossopteris in other parts of the world suggests that 
the strata of the Buckley Nunatak must be assigned to the Permo-Carboni- 
ferous period. In addition to Glossopteris, the Polar party found fragments of 
gymnospermous wood and impure beds of coal. Mr. Priestley, a member of 
Commander Campbell’s party, obtained a large piece of petrified wood from a 
sandstone boulder on the Priestley glacier in latitude 74° §., which on investi- 
gation proved to be a gymnospermous stem of considerable botanical interest ; 
the wood shows well-marked rings of growth and exhibits Araucarian charac- 
teristics, but in view of the possession of certain peculiar features it has been 
described under a new generic name as Antarcticoxylon Priestleyi. This stem, 
though particularly interesting from a botanical point of view and as demon- 
strating the occurrence of well-grown trees on the Antarctic continent, does not 
afford any conclusive evidence of geological age. Associated with the partially 
decayed tissues of Antarcticoxylon was found a winged pollen-grain, described 
as Pityosporites sp., which bears a striking resemblance to the pollen of recent 
Abietinez. 
In conclusion, reference was made to the bearing of these important dis- 
coveries on climatic considerations, and it was pointed out that, while there is 
