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president’s address. 
In favour of a Southern connexion of Antarctic Lands. 
A. R. Wallace in ‘ Island Life,’ says : — “ Whenever we find 
a considerable number of the Mammals [or flightless birds ] of two 
countries that exhibit distinct marks of relationship, we may be 
sure that an actual land-connection, or a close approach to one, has 
at one time existed.” 
Charles Darwin (‘Origin of Species,’ vol. ii., p. 190, 1888,) 
says “ Hew Zealand is plainly related to South America, although 
the next nearest continent is so enormously remote that the fact 
becomes an anomaly. This difficulty disappears in the view that 
New Zealand, South America, and the other Southern lands have 
been stocked in part from the Antarctic Islands, when they were 
clothed with vegetation during a warmer Tertiary period, before the 
commencement of the last Glacial epoch.” 
Dr. W. T. Blanford, F.R.S. (Pres. Geol. Soc. 1890) wrote in 
his address : — “ The biological evidence of a former land connection 
between South America and Africa is very strong, and if the 
difficulty about the depth of the intervening ocean is overcome, 
there is no improbability in the suggestion that, at some period of 
geological history, an important continent having connections with 
South America, South Africa, and New Zealand, may have occupied 
the Antarctic Area.” 
Professor Huxley “On the Distribution of Gallinaceous Birds,” 
P.Z.S., 1868, says: — “Of the two sections (the Aledropodes and 
the Peristeropodes ), the former are restricted to the Northern, and 
the latter to the Southern Hemisphere.” He goes on to compare the 
Curassows of South America with the Megapodes or Mound- 
builders of Australia; and he considers that they are sprung from 
one stock ; and that the common ancestors must have developed on 
some large area in the Southern Hemisphere, from which there was 
access both to South America and Australia. 
Professor W. Iv. Parker compares the Crows’ skulls, or 
Egithognatlious birds, and finds that the “ Lyre-birds ” of Australia 
are much more closely related to the Tincrmous than to the modern 
forms. The “ Jacanas ” (Rallidae) : South America, Africa, India, 
Australia. The African Secretary-bird (Serpenturius secretarius), is 
