DISTRIBUTION OF SPHAGNUM AND CAREX 339 



The Connections between South America and the Australian 

 Region. — This discussion of the route followed by both Sphagnum 

 and Carex in reaching Antarctic South America from high northern 

 latitudes raises the question in both cases of the Australian and New 

 Zealand connections with Fuegia and the Southern Andine region. 

 In both some of the species have established themselves either in 

 Australia or in New Zealand ; and the point at issue is the significance 

 of this fact. 



We will first take the case of Sphagnum. Two species that have 

 reached Fuegia from Arctic and Subarctic latitudes, namely, S. medium 

 and S. fimbriatum, are also found in South-east Australia and in New 

 Zealand. There are no other connections between these two regions 

 as respects Sphagnum, and it might at first appear that one region 

 had received its species from the other. But a glance at the distribu- 

 tion of both species makes it clear that just as they have traversed 

 the whole length of the New World from Alaska to the Straits of 

 Magellan and beyond, so they have reached Australia from its own 

 side of the globe, or, in other words, from high latitudes in Asia 

 by way of the Himalayas, in which last-named area they both 

 exist. 



It can be similarly shown in the case of the Carices that four out 

 of the six species, which the Australian and New Zealand regions hold 

 in common with the southern part of South America (South Chile, 

 Patagonia, and Fuegia), must have been derived from the same side 

 of the globe by the way of Central and South-eastern Asia. The 

 occurrence of these four species (C. canescens, cederi, pseudo-cyperus, 

 pumila) in Kashmir, Turkestan, South China, etc., renders needless 

 any appeal to South America as their possible source. It can also 

 be claimed for South America that the first three of the four species 

 named were derived overland from the north. Although they have 

 not been recorded from the tropics of the New World all three are 

 characteristic of temperate latitudes in North America; and in 

 postulating for them a southern route by the way of the Mexican 

 highlands and the Equatorial Andes, we should be merely assuming 

 that they have done that which has already been shown to have 

 been accomplished by C. macloviana and other Arctic species. An 

 objection might be raised in the case of C. oederi, which is represented 

 by a variety peculiar to New Zealand, South Africa, and extra- 

 tropical South America ; but this is met in the subsequent discussion. 



The Case of Carex pumila. — Yet, although the evidence is 

 sufficiently convincing that South America did not receive these three 

 species of Carex across the Southern Ocean from the Australian and 

 New Zealand region, in the case of the fourth species, C. pumila, 

 there is a distinct suggestion that it performed the ocean traverse 

 from New Zealand to Southern Chile. This Carex has only been 

 recorded in the New World from Chile; whilst it has an extensive 

 range in Eastern Asia from Manchuria to Formosa and Hongkong, 

 whence its extension to Queensland and over the eastern portion 

 of the Australian continent to Tasmania, and thence to New Zealand, 

 could be readily assumed. Since, therefore, it would be highly 

 improbable from the facts of distribution just given that Carex 



