The Antarctic 
coast of South America and form a continuous “ solid” 
continent extending beyond Cape Horn.’ 
It might have been, as Mr. Hedley suggests, a variable 
sort of connection sometimes dissolving into an archi- 
pelago of islands but providing at possibly different 
periods of time island stepping-stones between Cape 
Horn, the Antarctic Continent, and New Zealand. 
Some authors seem to have no hesitation in summon- 
ing a continent from the vasty deep simply in order to 
convey a beetle or a snail from one island to another, 
but it seems allowable in this case. 
If such a connection once existed, that is, between 
Cape Horn and the Antarctic Continent, the whole cir- 
culation of the ocean currents in the far south would 
be altered. One would expect a current of warm 
water to travel south along the west coast of South 
America; such a warm-water stream would, and as 
happens in the corresponding latitudes of Norway and 
British Columbia, enormously improve the climate of 
King Edward VII. and Alexandra lands. They might 
then have been as genial places as Ushiuaia in Fuegia 
or Bergen and Hammerfest, and so could have supported 
such hardy plants and animals as now exist in Western 
Fuegia. From the Antarctic they might be carried 
northward to New Zealand. 
As we have seen, there is some geological possibility 
for this connection. Certain animals, a peculiar horned 
turtle, and some peculiar marsupials are only known in 
South America and Australia, and such a connection 
has been suggested for their convenience. 
It is not, however, essential for the plants that there 
should have been more than a chain of island stepping- 
stones. 
It may be interesting to give a list of the most im- 
portant of them, so that the reader may appreciate the 
evidences involved. 
104 
