GEOLOGY. 177 
question why the great continents terminate to the Southward in 
points. 
There is much probability that the Antarctic continent will prove 
to be a very ancient continental tract. In this case marine stratified 
beds may be restricted to the coasts, though, as in other ancient con- 
tinents, sedimentary rocks of fresh-water or subaérial origin, possibly 
containing remains of plants and of vertebrate animals, may be 
largely developed in the interior. 
Evidence suggesting land communication in past times between 
the Antarctic area and the other Southern continents has accumulated 
greatly during the last thirty or forty years. Perhaps the most 
remarkable instance is that connected with the distribution of the 
southern Permo-carboniferous or Glossopteris flora. This flora has 
been long known in South Africa, India and Australia, and recently 
it has been discovered in South America and in Russia. It was quite 
distinct from the contemporaneous Sigillaria and Lepidodendron flora, 
the upper Paleozoic flora of Northern lands, though a slight admixture 
of the two has been found in South Africa and South America. That 
the Glossopteris flora travelled Northwards at the close of the Paleo- 
zoic era and replaced the Sigillaria flora appears evident from the 
fact that the former so closely resembles the Mesozoic flora of Europe 
as to have been for a long time regarded as Mesozoic by palzo- 
botanists. Curiously enough, there is much to suggest that this 
Glossopteris flora came originally from the South to Africa, America, 
Australia and India, for it was preceded in three of those areas by an 
earlier flora of the Northern Paleozoic type and the line of division 
between the two floras is marked by a bed containing boulders trans- 
ported by ice, and affording evidence of a phase of low temperature. 
It is not an unreasonable inference that this Glossopteris flora, which 
is singularly poor in species, is the offspring of a cold climate vegeta- 
tion, that it had its origin in the Antarctic continental area and was 
driven Northward towards the equator along tracts of land now 
beneath the ocean, during the prevalence of a period of cold similar 
to the glacial epoch of Pleistocene times, until it finally reached and 
crossed the equator and replaced the old Paleozoic flora of our coal- 
measures. Should any traces of the Glossopteris flora be found in the 
Paleozoic rocks of the Antarctic area, especially if there be reason for 
believing that these rocks are more ancient than the Glossopteris beds 
of Australia and South Africa, the hypothesis above suggested will 
be strongly supported. 
But if the Glossopteris flora came from Antarctic regions and 
spread over the world, may not other faunas and floras have had the 
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