Origin of Species Variorum

Comparison with 1859

suppose that there has been time since the commencement of the Glacial period for their migration, and for their subsequent modification to the necessary degree. The facts seem to me to indicate that peculiar and very distinct species have migrated in radiating lines from some common centre; and I am inclined to look in the southern, as in the northern hemisphere, to a former and warmer period, before the commencement of the Glacial period, when the antarctic lands, now covered with ice, supported a highly peculiar and isolated flora. I suspect that before this flora was exterminated by the Glacial epoch, a few forms were widely dispersed to various points of the southern hemisphere by occasional means of transport, and by the aid, as halting-places, of existing and now sunken islands, and perhaps at the commencement of the Glacial period, by icebergs. By these means, as I believe, the southern shores of America, Australia, New Zealand have become slightly tinted by the same peculiar forms of vegetable life.

Sir C. Lyell in a striking passage has speculated, in language almost identical with mine, on the effects of great alternations of climate on geographical distribution. ↑ I believe that the world has recently felt one of his great cycles of change; and that on this view, combined with modification through natural selection, a multitude of facts in the present distribution both of the same and of allied forms of life can be explained. The living waters may be said to have flowed during one short period from the north and from the south, and to have crossed at the equator; but to have flowed with greater force from the north so as to have freely inundated the south. As the tide leaves its drift in horizontal lines, though rising higher on the shores where the tide rises highest, so have the living waters left their living drift on our mountain-summits,

suppose that there has been time since the commencement of the Glacial period for their migration, and for their subsequent modification to the necessary degree. The facts seem to me to indicate that peculiar and very distinct species have migrated in radiating lines from some common centre; and I am inclined to look in the southern, as in the northern hemisphere, to a former and warmer period, before the commencement of the Glacial period, when the antarctic lands, now covered with ice, supported a highly peculiar and isolated flora. I suspect that before this flora was exterminated by the Glacial epoch, a few forms were widely dispersed to various points of the southern hemisphere by occasional means of transport, and by the aid, as halting-places, of existing and now sunken islands. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. By these means, as I believe, the southern shores of America, Australia, New Zealand, have become slightly tinted by the same peculiar forms of vegetable life.