i86 The American Geologist. ^arch. i904. 
of life at the pole. See p. 59. Wallace (quoted by Warren) 
shows that the ""facts of arctic paleontology call for the suppo- 
sition of a primitive Eocene continent in the highest latitudes." 
Professor Heer of Zurich noted the same. Baron Nordenski- 
jold arrived at the same conclusion. J. Starkie Gardner argued 
from the facts known then (1878) that continuous land once 
united Europe and North America. This arctic continent, 
whether it was that which was submerged by the ocean that cov- 
ered northern Asia as shown by professor G. F. Wright, in late 
Glacial or post-Glacial time, or was that which gave birth to the 
great glaciers of the Glacial epoch, subsisted through the Ter- 
tiary, since fossil Tertiar}^ land plants, indicating warm and 
moist climates, have been found at numerous points within the 
Arctic circle. Given this continent and the tropical warmth that 
its fossils denote, the great preponderance of light over dark- 
ness, the intensity of direct, continued sun's rays, and the con- 
ditions were favorable for the most luxuriant, if not for spon- 
taneous, life. It is now a well-known doctrine of fossil botan- 
ists that the oldest land plants of the earth originated in the 
region of the North pole and from there spread southwardly. 
This evolution toward the south continued. That the Arctic 
region was the birth place of plants and continued to send her 
progeny southward until the close of the Tertiary has been 
demonstrated by Gray, Heer, Hooker, Kuntze. Saporta and 
others. 
With the existence of such a continent at the north pole, and 
with the demonstrated stream of migratory plant life emerging 
from it, the author does not fail to inquire as to the evidence of 
animal origin in the same region. He quotes Orton (1876) and 
Wallace (1876) to the effect that the north temperate and Arc- 
tic regions have been the starting-points of long continued mi- 
grations and concludes this branch of his inquiry in the follow- 
ing words : "From all the facts but one conclusion is possible, 
and that is that like as the Arctic pole is the mother region of 
all plants, so it is the mother region of all animals — the region 
where, in the beginning God created every beast of the earth 
after its kind, and cattle after their kind. And this is the con- 
clusion now being reached and announced by all comparative 
zoologists who busy themselves with the problem of the origin 
and nrchistoric distribution of the animal world. But to believe 
