806 StTBANTARCTlC ISLANDS OF NEW ZEALAND. [Summary of Results. 



at the same time of land in the neighbourhood, and it seems probable that the 

 Antarctic Continent was at that time at a higher level, and that there was a more 

 or less continuous coast-line connecting South America on the one hand with the 

 New Zealand continent on the other. The same question is dealt with by von 

 Jhering, who in his "Mollusques fossiles de I'Argentine" (1907) devotes several pages 

 to a consideration of the " Relations de la faune pan-patagonienne avec celle de la 

 Nouvelle-Zelande"; and A. Gaudry (1907, p. 351), after a review of the fossil mam- 

 malian fauna of Patagonia, comes to the conclusion that it cannot be explained 

 unless Patagonia is the remnant of a vast antarctic continent. 



The facts given in the preceding pages show that in the subantarctic islands 

 of New Zealand we have some forms of life showing close connection with New 

 Zealand, and evidently derived from that land, many of them doubtless having come 

 originally from the north ; and that with these there is mixed a pretty large ant- 

 arctic element showing affinities particularly with South America, and other more 

 remote affinities with the Kerguelen-Crozet groups and with South Africa. The evi- 

 dence pointing to former extensions of land from the Antarctic Continent northwards, 

 and to the warmer climate that was enjoyed by this continent in early Tertiary 

 times, seems to offer a fairly satisfactory explanation of the facts before us ; and 

 it accounts also for the occurrence of special endemic genera, such as Pringlea and 

 Lyallia on Kerguelen, and Stilbocarpa* and Pleurofhyllum on the subantarctic 

 islands of New Zealand. These are admittedly antarctic forms, and have doubtless 

 developed in the northern extensions of the former Antarctic Continent, which 

 were naturally more isolated from one another than the regions further south. The 

 forms both of plants and of animals that are now common to the whole of these 

 subantarctic islands must at one time have been spread over practically the whole 

 of the Antarctic Continent, and since they no longer exist on that continent in 

 its present form it is evident they must have continued more or less unchanged 

 throughout probably the greater part of the Tertiary period, so that a species such 

 as the land Isopod Trichoniscus magellanicus, now found in the New Zealand region, 

 in South America, and the Falklands, and probably also on the Crozets, is a form 

 of very considerable antiquity. That species do actually continue unchanged for 

 long periods in this way there is, of course, abundant evidence, though, unfor- 

 tunately, that evidence is not often obtainable in the case of small crustaceans 

 owing to their unsuitability for preservation as fossils. Mr. Suter has recently 

 drawn up a list of 219 shells still existing in New Zealand which are also found 

 fossil, some of them dating back to the Oamaru series, which is probably to be 

 considered of Oligocene or of Eocene age. 



In the above discussion I have confined myself to the points that naturally 

 arose in connection with the fauna and flora of the islands under consideration, 

 and have not attempted a general revision of the evidence for and against the sub- 

 antarctic continent. This question has been discussed by many writers in the past, 

 and more recently by Geoffrey Smith (1908, 1909a, and 19096), Dahl (1908), and 

 Kolbe (1909), &c., and it will doubtless be still further discussed as additional results 

 of the recent antarctic expeditions are published. Many of those that have already 

 appeared are not yet available in New Zealand, and the conclusions given above 



* Stilboca/rpa is also found on the extreme south of New Zealand. 



