3 o2 THE ANIMALS OF THE ANTARCTIC 



the different southern faunas may be explained by what has been termed con- 

 vergence is considered to be untenable, as convergence consists in resemblances 

 between different groups, not in the likeness of allied forms. A South Polar union 

 of the southern continents in later Tertiary times is therefore considered by some 

 of those who have paid special attention to the subject as fully demonstrated. 



The dreary ice-fields and icebound coasts of the Antarctic continent and its 

 immediate neighbourhood need not form the subject of description on the present 

 occasion. Reference may, however, be made to a few of the features of the Falk- 

 land Islands as an example of the physical features of less distinctly Antarctic 

 lands. Although the Falklands are often supposed to present an example of utter 

 desolation, this is not really the case, the vegetation being abundant in places, and 

 the shores of the caves and estuaries in certain parts of the West Falklands being 

 fringed with bushes of the striking and handsome Falkland box {Veronica 

 decussata), which produces beautiful and highly scented flowers. Much of the 

 country is, however, covered with peat-bogs, which are traversed in places by 

 " rivers " of moving blocks of stone. On the peat itself bog-balsam (Bolax globaria) 

 grows in great globular masses, some of which often persist in the middle of the 

 " stone-rivers," owing to the length of their roots, which much exceed those of other 

 bog-plants, and are thus able to retain a hold in the subjacent soil. 



The Falkland Islands are, or rather were, the home of a member 

 of the dog and wolf family, in connection with which a considerable 

 amount of adventitious interest has been aroused. This animal (Canis antarcticus) 

 was associated in the early part of the nineteenth century with the so-called foxes 

 of South America, and was referred to by Darwin as a wolf-like fox. Later on, 

 however, an idea was started that this animal was related to the coyote of North 

 America and the jackals of the Old World ; and much ink has been wasted in the 

 endeavour to account for such an apparently strange anomaly in geographical 

 distribution. As a matter of fact, the Falkland fox, or Falkland, or Antarctic, 

 wolf, as it is frequently termed, is undoubtedly an overgrown and superficially wolf- 

 like member of the group represented by the South American foxes, which, as 

 stated in an earlier chapter, are not foxes at all, in the proper sense of that term. 

 Some years ago an English resident in the Falklands endeavoured to obtain a 

 specimen of C. antarcticus, and eventually came to the conclusion that it had been 

 completely exterminated, the last known individual having apparently been killed 

 about the year 1876. A mounted specimen is exhibited in the Natural History 

 Branch of the British Museum. 

 Sea-Lions and The Antarctic area is the home of a considerable number of 



Sea-Bears. species of seals, some of which belong to the typical earless family 

 (Phocidaf), while others, commonly known as sea-lions and sea-bears, belong to 

 the family Otariidce, or eared seals, so called from the circumstance that they 

 retain rudimentary external ears. All these sea-lions and sea-bears are nearly 

 related to those inhabiting the shores and islands of the North Pacific. The earless 

 Antarctic seals, on the other hand, belong to genera quite distinct from those found in 

 northern seas ; the only genus represented to the north of the equator being the ele- 

 phant-seals, one species of which migrates at a certain time of the year as far north 

 as the coast of California. Walruses are entirely unknown in the southern seas. 



