318 Geographical Distribution of Plants 
must continually be happening!” If we give to “continually” a 
cosmic measure, can the fact be doubted? All this, in the light of our 
present knowledge, is too obvious to us to admit of discussion. But 
it seems to me nothing less than pathetic to see how in the teeth 
of the obsession as to continental extension, Darwin fought single- 
handed for what we now know to be the truth. 
Guppy’s heart failed him when he had to deal with the isolated 
case of Agathis which alone seemed inexplicable by known means of 
transport. But when we remember that it is a relic of the pre- 
Angiospermous flora, and is of Araucarian ancestry, it cannot be 
said that the impossibility, in so prolonged a history, of the bodily 
transference of cone-bearing branches or even of trees, compels us 
as a last resort to fall back on continental extension to account for 
its existing distribution. 
When Darwin was in the Galapagos Archipelago, he tells us that 
he fancied himself “brought near to the very act of creation.” He 
saw how new species might arise from a common stock. Krakatau 
shows us an earlier stage and how by simple agencies, continually at 
work, that stock might be supplied. It also shows us how the mixed 
and casual elements of a new colony enter into competition for the 
ground and become mutually adjusted. The study of Plant Distri- 
bution from a Darwinian standpoint has opened up a new field of 
research in Ecology. The means of transport supply the materials 
for a flora, but their ultimate fate depends on their equipment for 
the “struggle for existence.” The whole subject can no longer be 
regarded as a mere statistical inquiry which has seemed doubtless 
to many of somewhat arid interest. The fate of every element of 
the earth’s vegetation has sooner or later depended on its ability to 
travel and to hold its own under new conditions. And the means by 
which it has secured success is in each case a biological problem 
which demands and will reward the most attentive study. This is 
the lesson which Darwin has bequeathed to us. It is summed up in 
the concluding paragraph of the’ Origin? :—“It is interesting to 
contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many 
kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting 
about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to 
reflect. that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from 
each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, 
have all been produced by laws acting around us.” 
1 Life and Letters, u. pp. 56, 57. 2 Origin of Species (6th edit.), p 429. 
