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PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS : PALAEONTOLOGY. 
This opinion is the more remarkable, since it was first expressed at a time 
(Hooker, 1847, p. 21 1), when Darwin’s “Origin of Species” had not yet 
been published. Although Hooker hints at this possibility very cau- 
tiously, he returns to this point in 1853 (p. xxiii ff.) more emphatically, 
and again in 1859 (pp. xvii and civ), and in this case from a Darwinian 
point of view (he refers here to Darwin’s unprinted “Origin of Species”). 
His general idea was, that the southern floras indicate one great vegeta- 
tion, which may once have covered a larger southern area of land ; but 
he leaves it uncertain where was the position of this southern continent, 
especially he does not connect it with the polar lands of the southern 
hemisphere. Some of his remarks even indicate that he was in favor of 
placing this land connection in lower latitudes (about that of Tierra del 
Fuego and Kerguelen Islands). 
Among zoologists this theory of former connections of the southern 
lands was not taken up, until Ruetimeyer (1867, pp. 15 and 23) — but 
without reference to Hooker — expressed the opinion that the Antarctic 
continent is to be regarded as a center of a separate development of a 
certain stock of animals, from which the inhabitants spread northward, 
and that we should regard the faunal elements common to Australia, 
South America and South Africa as remnants of this Antarctic fauna. He 
expresses no opinion on the probable extent and configuration- of this 
southern center, but only says that the assumption of a connection of the 
three southern land masses with the Antarctic continent would explain 
many facts of present distribution. 
The next to discuss this question was Hutton (1873 and 1874). Fie 
has practically the same idea as Ruetimeyer, and assumes a former greater 
extension of land in the southern hemisphere, South America, New Zea- 
land, Australia and South Africa were connected by a continent, which in 
its largest extension existed at the beginning of Cretaceous times, but 
which was not necessarily a single, completely continuous mass at one 
and the same time. 
Accepting Wallace’s opinion (1876) mentioned above, Hutton subse- 
quently changed this view (1884), and abandoned the connections of these 
regions by an extension of the Antarctic continent, especially he no longer 
believes that South Africa had a connection with it. But he still main- 
tains that there was a land connection between Australia and South 
America, and he constructs this bridge across the middle part of the Pa- 
