196 H. B. GUPPY, M.B.^ F.R.S.E., ON PLANT-DISTRIBUTION 



been physically disconnected by the ocean for several geological ages^ 

 certainly since the Cretaceous period 1* 



Dr. Guppy closes his paper by asking the question, " Whence came 

 the Angiosperms which appear with the Upper Cretaceous period 

 with such startling suddenness "? " Down throughout the Mesozoic 

 ages, the flora of the \vorld was (as far as our knowledge extends) 

 restricted to Conifers, Cycads, Ferns, and Equisetums — a gloomy 

 and flowerless vegetation. Hitherto no examples of dicotyledonous 

 plants had appeared, but vvith the Upper Cretaceous period a change 

 in the flora took place so remarkable that Prof. Oswald Herr 

 characterises it as " a new fundamental conception " introduced into 

 the Vegetable Kingdom. It reminds one of the change which took 

 place over Western Europe in architecture when the light and 

 graceful " Early English " style replaced the massive and heavy 

 " Anglo-Xorman." To this change we are indebted for our forest 

 trees, the oak, the walnut, the willow, the poplar, the plane, the 

 hornbean, the liriodenclron, the fig, magnolia, the myrtle, and the- 

 eucalyptus. Later on in early Tertiary times, fruit trees and 

 flowering plants established their range, supplying us with food and 

 decorating our hills and valleys. As the period for man's abode on 

 earth approached, nature, under a guiding Providence, furnished 

 and decorated his dwelling place. To the question above stated, 

 Dr. Guppy gives no reply. It is so far an unsolved problem, which 

 the geologist would try to answer by stating that the gap in time- 

 between the Lower and L^pper Cretaceous was so immense that by 

 a process of evolution the change resulted ; but a botanist of eminence,. 

 Mr. Seaward, in his address to the British Association, states, "AVe 

 are profoundly ignorant of the means by which nature produced 

 this new creation."! The reply which refers all such facts to " the 

 imperfection of the geological record," has been characterised by 

 an eminent man of science as " the inflated cushion on which you 

 try to bolster up the defects of your hypothesis." Not a l)ad 

 illustration ! 



Dr. R. P. COLLES. — In reply to your very courteous request 



* In the Animal Kingdom the development of the horse both m 

 America and Europasia gives us an example of the process of nature- 

 above referred to. 



t Brit. Assoc. It^j orf, 1903, p. F47. 



