BOTA>'Y OF KERGUELEN ISLAND— DR. HOOKER. 
7 
485), “ tlie occurrence of Pringlea on the island, as also on the Crozets and Kerguelen 
“ Island, point to an ancient land connection between these islands, which the 
“ antiquity and extent of denudation of the lavas would appear to hear out. It is 
“ difficult to see how sueh seeds as those of Pringlea could have been transported 
“ from one island to another by birds ; and the seeds seem to he remarkably 
“ perishable; besides the distinctness of the genus points to a former wide extension 
“ of land on which its progenitors became developed. The existenee of fossil tree 
“ trunks in the Crozets and Kerguelen Island points to similar conditions. 
In the Elora Antarctica, I say, p. 220, referring to the time required for the 
formation of the innumerable superimposed beds of volcanie rocks, as observed by 
me in Kerguelen’s Land, and for the growths and destruetions of successive forest 
vegetations that once clothed the island, and are now imbedded in strata at great 
depths, that this time is sufficient “ for the destruction of a large body of land 
“ to the northward of it, of which St. Paul’s and Amsterdam Island may be tlie 
“ only remains; or for the subsidence of a chain of mountains running east and 
“ west, of which Prince Edward’s Island, IMarion, and the Crozets, are the exposed 
“ peaks.” And, at p. 210, when discussing the structural peculiarities of the 
Pringlea, I say, “ Ilowever loth wo may be to concede to any of our vegetable pro- 
“ ductions an antiquity greater than another, or to this island (Kerguelen) a posi- 
“ tion to other lands wholly different from that it now presents, the most casual 
“ inspection of the land whore this plant now grows will force one of the two 
“ following conelusions upon the mind, either that it w^as created after the extinc- 
“ tion of the now buried and for ever lost vegetation, or that it spread over the 
“ island from another and neighbouring region, where it was undisturl)ed during 
“ the devastation of this, hut of whose existence no indication remains.”* 
It remains to indicate the faint traces of relationship wdiich the Kerguelen Island 
vegetation presents with those of a few other spots of land in a lower latitude, and 
that might be supposed to share some of its peculiarities. Of these the nearest are 
Amsterdam and St. Paul’s Islands, the names of which arc often transposed in our 
best maps (even in the Admiralty South. Polar Chart of 1839). They lie about 800 
* These ideas, suggesting the hypotliesis that the existing distribution of plants is dependent on former 
geographiciil relations of land and sea, suggested themselves to me during my visit to Kerguelen Island in 
1840. The first attempt to apply similar views in extenso to the conditions of a botanically well-known 
country w!is in the late Rrofessor Edward Forbes’ paper “on the distribution of endemic plants, more espe- 
“ daily those of the British Islands, considered with regard to geological changes.” “ Brit. Assoc. Reports 
“ for 1845.” It had, however, been previously cnuneia'ted l>y Lyell, who thus accounted for the identity of 
the Sicilian animals and plants with those of the surrounding Mediterranean shores. 
He supposes these to have “migrated from pre existing lands, just as the plants .and animals of the 
“ Phloegrean fields have colonised Monte Nuovo since that mountain was thrown up in the 16th centurv,” 
and further on he says, “we arc brought therefore to .admit the curious result, th.at the flora and fauna of 
“ theVal di Noto, and some other mountain regions of Sicily, are of higher antiquity than the country 
“ itself, having not only flourished before the lands were raised from the deep, but even before they were 
“ deposited beneath the waters.” Principles of Geology, Ed. v. iii., p. 444, &c. 
