PRESIDENT 8 ADDRESS. 
439 
The Honourable Walter Rothschild lately obtained one, at great 
expense, and presented it to the National Museum. 
The Penguins (Impennes) may be said to represent in the 
Southern Ocean the Auks and Divers of the Northern Seas. 
Whether these are all (as the Penguins and Auks are,) merely 
representative forms , or whether they may have in some cases been 
able to cross the equatorial region and reach the Arctic from the 
Antarctic is an open question. Certain deep-sea water forms of 
Crustacea may have done so along lines of cold currents in the ocean, 
but this does not so easily explain the presence of shore and surface- 
dwelling forms of life having a common facies if not an actual 
close family relationship. Still, it must be borne in mind that, 
cold polar currents do reach near to the equator on the South 
American Chilian Coast. The Sea Lions and the Elephant Seal 
have thus, in all probability, been enabled to “ cross the line.” 
Antarctica in connection with the Neighuouring Land-areas. 
Fifty years ago there were very few men of science bold enough 
either to suggest or to accept the theory that the Geographical 
Distribution of Plants and Animals had actually commenced far 
back in past geological time. 
Professor Edward Forbes, S. P. Woodward, Darwin, Wallace, 
Huxley, Sclater, Blanford, H. 0. Forbes, and others, have advocated 
these views, but they have become greatly modified in our own 
day since the time at which they were first expressed. 
Australia was deemed to be a survival from the Jurassic period, 
New Zealand from the Triassic, and so on.* Australia is now known 
to possess representatives of almost every formation from Cambrian 
and Silurian times, to the Tertiary. 
The fact remains that the Flora and Fauna of Australia and 
New Zealand present remarkable characteristics which, until lately, 
were believed not to exist, on any other part of the earth’s surface. 
* The great Struthious (wingless) birds of New Zealand were formerly 
supposed to be the descendants of the makers of the tridactyle footprints 
left upon the slabs of Triassic sandstone in the Connecticut Yalley and 
elsewhere. These footprints have been described by the late Professor O. C. 
Marsh, and shown to have been left by bipedal Dinosaurian reptiles, which 
were living in the Triassic Period, before birds had made their appearance. 
