116 MANUAL OF THE MOLLUSCA. 
zoologica: evidence that these islands were united to the main- 
land of South America at no very distant geological period. 
The flora consists of characteristic plants of Fuegia and Pata- 
gonia, mingled, and overspreading the whole surface; few 
species are peculiar. (J. D. Hooker.)* 
* Dr. Hooker has suggested that not only the Falkland Islands, but the far distant 
Tristan d’Acunha (p. 97) and Kerguelen’s-land (p. 99), may be mountain-teps of a 
continent which has been submerged since the epoch of their existing flora. ‘“ There 
are five detached groups of islands between Fuegia and Kerguelen’s-land (a region 
extending 5,000 miles), all partaking of the botanical peculiarities of the southern 
extremity of the S. American continent. Some of these detached spots are much 
eloser to the African and Australian continents, whose vegetation they do not assume, 
than to the American; and they are situated in latitudes and under circumstances 
eminently unfavourable to the migration of species.” 
“The botany of Tristan d’Acunha (which is only 1,000 miles distant from the Cape of 
Good Hope, but 3;000 from the Straits of Magellan) is far more intimately allied to that 
of Fuegia than Africa. Of twenty-eight flowering plants, seven are natives of Fuegia, 
or typical of S. American botany. 
‘The flora of Kerguelen’s-land is similar to, and many of the species identical with, 
those of the American continent. (Its geological structure) would bespeak an antiquity 
for the flora of this isolated speck on the surface of our globe far beyond our power of 
calculation. We may regard it as the remains of some far more extended body of 
land.” (Botany of Antarctic Yoyage, i. pt. 2, 1847). 
