242 
The American Geologist. 
April, 1896 
Antarctica Paleontology . W. B. Scott, Princeton University. 
Botany. N. L. Britton, Columbia College. 
The Terrestrial Invertebrata. A. S. Packard, Brown University. 
Vertebrata of the Land; Fishes, Batrachia , and Reptiles. Theo. 
Gilt, Washington. 
Vertebrata of the Land; Birds and Mammals. J. A. Allen, Ameri¬ 
can Museum of Natural History, New York. 
Vertebrata of the Sea. Theo. Gill, Washington. 
Excellent abstracts of these papers are given in Science 
(new series, vol. hi, pp. 305-320, Feb. 28, 1896), from which 
some portions of the conclusions of these several investigators 
are here briefly noted. 
Prof. Heilprin thinks “ that Antarctica, whether as a conti¬ 
nent or in fragmented parts, had a definite connection with 
one or more of the land masses lying to the north, and the 
suspicion can hardly be avoided that such connection was, 
if with nothing else, with at least New Zealand (and, through 
it, with Australia) and Patagonia.” 
Prof. Scott, agreeing with this, writes : “ The presence of 
numerous marsupials of distinctively Australian type in the 
Tertiary rocks of South America is very strong evidence 
indeed that both of those continents were connected with the 
Antarctic land.The facts of paleontology may best be 
explained on the assumption that the Antarctic land mass has 
at one time or another been connected with Africa, Australia, 
and South America, which formerly radiated from the South 
Pole as North America and Eurasia now do from the North 
Pole.” 
Prof. Britton finds, however, that the^present floras of the 
extreme southern lands have scarcely a sufficient number of 
common and closely related species to suggest any former 
land connection across the Antarctic region in explanation. 
Many of the instances of genera represented only in South 
Africa, Patagonia and Chile, and New Zealand and Australia, 
or on far southern islands, which Prof. Britton cites, seem 
very remarkable, and it may be acknowledged that the floras 
do not forbid the hypothesis of a formerly greater Antarctic 
continent with a temperate climate. Very probably low lands 
surrounding the pole, with numerous indenting gulfs and 
inland seas, would not become covered by an ice-sheet, which 
as it now envelopes the region, may be due to its compara¬ 
tively late elevation. 
