INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 



where); there were such peculiarities in the plants so circumstanced, as rendered many of them 

 the least likely of all to have availed themselves of what possible chances of transport there may 

 have been. As species they were either not so abundant in individuals, or not prolific enough to have 

 been the first to offer themselves for chance transport, or their seeds presented no facilities for migra- 

 tion*, or were singularly perishable from feeble vitality, soft or brittle integuments, the presence 

 of oil that soon became rancid, or from having a fleshy albumen that quickly decayedf. Added 

 to the fact that of all the plants in the respective floras of the Antarctic islands, those common to 

 any two of them were the most unlikely of all to emigrate, and that there were plenty of species 

 possessing unusual facilities, which had not availed themselves of them, there was another important 

 point, namely, the little chance there was of the seeds growing at all, after transport. Though 

 thousands of seeds are annually shed in those bleak regions, few indeed vegetate, and of these fewer 

 still arrive at maturity. There is no annual plant in Kerguelen's Land, and seedlings are extremely 

 rare there ; the seeds, if not eaten by birds, either rot on the ground or are washed away ; and the 

 conclusion is evident, that if such mortality attends them in their own island, the chances must be 

 small indeed for a solitary individual, after being transported perhaps thousands of miles, to some 

 spot where the available soil is pre-occupied. 



Beyond the bare fact of the difficulty of accounting by any other means for the presence of the 

 same species in two of the islands, there appeared nothing in the botany of the Antarctic regions to 

 support or even to favour the assumption of a double creation, and I hence dismissed it as a mere 

 speculation which, till it gained some support on philosophical principles, could only be regarded as 

 shelving a difficulty ; whilst the unstable doctrine that would account for the creation of each species 

 on each island by progressive development on the spot, was contradicted by every fact. 



It was with these conclusions before me, that I was led to speculate on the possibility of the 

 plants of the Southern Ocean being the remains of a flora that had once spread over a larger and 

 more continuous tract of land than now exists in that ocean ; and that the peculiar Antarctic genera 

 and species may be the vestiges of a flora characterized by the predominance of plants which are 

 now scattered throughout the southern islands. An allusion to these speculations "was made in the 

 ' Flora Antarctica' (pp. 210 and 368), where some circumstances connected with the distribution of the 

 Antarctic islands were dwelt upon, and their resemblance to the summits of a submerged moun- 

 tain chain was pointed out ; but beyond the facts that the general features of the flora favoured snch 

 a view, that the difficulties in the way of transport appeared to admit of no other solution, and that 

 there are no limits assignable to the age of the species that would make their creation posterior to 

 such a series of geological changes as should remove the intervening land, there was nothing in 

 the shape of evidence by which my speculation could be supported. I am indebted to the invaluable 

 labom's of Lyell and DarwinJ, for the facts that could alone have given countenance to such 

 an hypothesis ; the one showing that the necessary time and elevations and depressions of land 



* Thus of the Compositm, common to -Lord Auckland's Group, Fuegia, and Kerguelen's Land, none Lv 

 pappus (or seed-down) at all ! Of the many species with pappus, none are common to two of these islands ! 



t Of the seeds sent to England from the Antarctic regions, or transported by myself between the several is 

 almost all perished during transmission. 



% See Darwin's ' Journal of a Naturalist,' and ' Essays on Volcanic Islands and Coral Islauds.' The proofs of 

 the coasts of Chili and Patagonia having been raised continuously, for several hundred miles, to elevations 

 between 400 and 1300 feet, since the period of the creation of existing shells, will be found in the first-named of 

 these admirable works, which should be in the hands of every New Zealand Naturalist, if only horn its eonl 



