46 MB. A. MUMIA-Y ON THE GEOGEAPHICAL EELATIONS OF 



p. 406.) It was by that pristine Patagonia that these African 

 relics must have reached their present place of abode, and it 

 must have stretched out until it reached the Cape of G-ood Hope, 

 sending out perhaps arms to Tristan d'Acunha and St. Helena, 

 which, however, have the option of, what I think, a still more an- 

 cient union in another direction, as to which I shall have some- 

 thing to say when I come to Brazil and Madagascar. Judging 

 from the character of the species preserved, we can guess at the 

 character of the land uniting the two continents. It must have 

 been a country much of the same general character as Caifraria, 

 perhaps more flat and desert, and, like it, thinly clothed with ve- 

 getation. If it were not, then surely some trace of the African 

 flora would have been left on the Andes. "When it sunk again, 

 all visible traces of its existence sunk with it, except perhaps the 

 'Rhea and beetles (and possibly one or two other animals which 

 have escaped my recollection or, as yet, the researches of travel- 

 lers) which happened to be left on the shore when the ground in 

 front of them disappeared, the score or so of plants left on St. 

 Helena and Tristan d'Acunha, and a slight sprinking of micro- 

 typal forms which still subsist at the Cape. That there should 

 be such a trace at the Cape is, I think, essential to the hypothesis, 

 always provided that the microtypal stirps had then reached the 

 Patagonian Andes ; for although from the physical nature of the 

 country at the Andes a whole continent might sink out of sight 

 quite up to its walls, carrying its population with it and leaving 

 almost no trace behind, there is no similar barrier at the Cape. 

 Some of the population of the submerged land must have either 

 already settled in the country or escaped from their own land 

 when it sunk. It may be that the microtypal stream had not yet 

 reached Patagonia, that it arrived there, via the Atlantic islands, 

 subsequent to this event. Mr. Darwin mentions that Mr. Brown 

 determined for him the petrified trees above mentioned to be 

 Araucarias ; but this does not settle the question, for although 

 coniferous trees are certainly microtypal, the Araucarias may have 

 come from Brazil of an older date. I shall, under the head of 

 Polynesia, notice the arguments, pro and con, as regards the cha- 

 racter of the Araucat^ia. That Cafiraria has a slight tinge of the 

 microtypal element is certain ; but it may have received it from 

 Australia, as an affinity indicative of an ancient connexion between 

 the Cape and the south-west of Australia has been sufficiently 

 proved in plants, mammals, birds, as well as in insects. In 



