Bd. III: 14) 
THE MESOZOIC FLORA. 
107 
In Spite of the fact that there is no contemporaneous flora within a great distance 
from Graham Land, it is apparent already from the above discussion of the geo- 
logical age, that the affinities of the Hope Bay flora with other known floras do not 
seem to be in any way influenced by the remoteness. The greatest resemblance is 
to the Middle Jurassic flora of England, with which nine species are common. As 
mentioned above, this is nO doubt mostly due to the circumstance that the Lower 
Oolite flora of England is the best known flora of this age. Yet the fact is of great 
importance because there has been held to exist a marked though not great differ- 
ence between northern and southern floras in Jurassic times. To the southern type 
are reckoned the floras of the old Gondwana Continents i. e. the areas characterized, 
during the late Palæozoic by the Glossopteris-^^ox^.^ which was entirely different from 
the contemporaneous northern flora. It is especially Eeistmantel who has en- 
deavoured to show that the difference between these two phyto-geographical pro- 
vinces continued, though in a far lesser degree, also in the Jurassic. There is every 
reason to believe that, during the late Palæozoic, Graham Land belonged to the 
region of the Glossopteris-^iorsi, since Glossopteris and other typical representatives 
of that flora have been found in the Ealkland Islands (Halle, 1911). It is of con- 
siderable interest, therefore, to find in Graham Land a flora which shows a very great 
agreement with the type-flora of the northern province. It could perhaps be sug- 
gested that the resemblance between the Antarctic and English Jurassic floras might 
be caused by the fact that they both belonged to the temperate zones of Jurassic 
times, being in not very different latitudes, whereas the Indian flora might be expected 
to show a different development because of its occurrence in the tropics. (The 
abundance of very large fronds of Tœniopteris and Pterophylluni in the Indian flora 
might possibly be quoted as an argument.) Seward has shown, however, in many 
instances, that the differences between the European and Indian floras have been 
largely overestimated; and the Hope Bay flora is another evidence pointing in the 
same direction. Though the closest agreement is with the Jurassic flora of England, 
the resemblance to the Indian Upper Gondwana floras is very nearly as great. 
The Hope Bay flora tends thereby to lessen yet more the differences between these 
floras and thus becomes another important illustration of the uniformity and world- 
wide distribution of Jurassic floras. This uniformity is all the more striking because 
of the pronounced differentiation of the world’s vegetation into two different phyto- 
geographical provinces at the end of the Palæozoic, which difference would appear 
to have become almost extinguished in Jurassic times. 
