THE FOSSIL PLANTS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7979, 7 April 1904, Page 4

THE FOSSIL PLANTS.

THEIR. BEARING ON SCIENTIFIC THEORIES. LAND CONNECTION WITH SOUTH AMERICA. When seen by a reporter yesterday, regarding the scientific results of the expedition, Dr L. Cockayne remarked that Mr Ferrar's discovery of fossil plants was of very high biological importance, and would be of great interest to the scientific world. In the New Zealand flora, Dr Cockayne continued, there was a certain percentage of plants closely related to others in southern South America, many species being identical. How such plants had found their way from South • America to New Zealand bad been for more than fifty years a biological puzzle. At present' the general concensus of opinion was that those ' plants came by way of Antarctica, and the chief bone of contention amongst scientific men was whether there had been actual land connection all the way from South America to New Zealand and Australia, or whether a number of islands had served to bridge tne enormous distance between those regions; in the latter case, seeds of plants being carried from one island to 'the next by ocean currents, birds, winds, or other agencies. His recent investigations into the origin of the flora of the southern islands of New Zealand had kd him to side with those who advocated actual land connection, and in his paper, now in the press, he had gone further thaa any previous writer in stating that some of the meadow plants of the Auckland, Campbell' and Antipodes Islands might h« actual rdics of a former meadow flora of Antarctica, while the 01e*ria Lyallii forest of Ewing Island, in the Auckland group, was a portion of an ancient Antarctic forest that) had been almost wiped- out of existence by the sub-tropical rata forest, which descended from the north at a time when New Zealand extended much further to the south than at present. Although considerable proof of a former warmer climate in Antarctica was not. waiting, Mr Ferrar's great disoovery of fossil plants showed without doubt that the climate during the Tertiary Period was sufficiently warm to permit the existence of a | more or less rich vegetation of flowering nla-A"- t— + imA «dE >Ls Jaw jxuuutAa utol ludw .•■■•■■■.-'■/ '■ - .." ."•'.'■■

ens &fc present existing there, as reported by Dr KoeLtlitz. At that period, too, Tertiary New Zealand would be much hotter than at present, and its vegetation tropical or sub-tropical, but at a later date, as th« cold increased, the temperate vegetation o Antarctica would push northwards, and s< the South American plants would reach Ncv. Zealand, together with certain peculiaa southern genera of plants, such as celmisia and olearia, which had been considered by some plant-geographers as having originated on a problematical southern land, now long sunk beneath the waves. j